Young smokers are ‘EIGHT TIMES more likely to suffer a major heart attack than their non-smoking peers’
YOUNG smokers are more than eight times more likely to have a major heart attack compared to non-smokers, experts today warned.
It makes smokers under the age of 50 the most vulnerable of any age group of smokers, a new study suggests.
All smokers have a significantly higher risk of heart attack than non-smokers of the same age, but it’s not clear what the magnitude of that risk is among different age groups.
To try and quantify this, the researchers drew on data for 1,727 adults undergoing treatment for a severe type of heart attack - caused by one of the major arteries supplying the heart becoming blocked.
The research was conducted at South Yorkshire’s regional specialist cardiothoracic centre in Sheffield, between 2009 and 2012.
The type of heart attack, known as a STEMI, causes a large portion of the heart muscle to die.
The researchers also used data from the Office for National Statistics integrated household survey, for the South Yorkshire region to collect information on smoking prevalence and other aspects of perceived health.
Almost half of the patients - 48.5 per cent - were current smokers, with roughly a quarter - just over 27 per cent- former smokers, and a quarter non-smokers.
The researchers noted current smokers tended to be 10-11 years younger than ex or non-smokers when they suffered a heart attack.
Even reducing the number of cigarettes smoked daily might make a difference
Dr Yaron Arbel
And, along with ex-smokers, current smokers were twice as likely as non-smokers to have had previous episodes of coronary artery disease.
They were also three times as likely as non-smokers to have peripheral vascular disease, a condition in which a build-up of fatty deposits in blood vessels restricts blood supply to the legs.
Based on the ONS data, the overall prevalence of smoking in South Yorkshire was 22.4 per cent, with the highest amount among those under the age of 50, at just over 27 per cent.
But among STEMI patients under the age of 50, smoking prevalence was almost 75 per cent.
Overall, the data analysis showed that smokers were more than three times as likely to have their heart muscle die than ex- and non-smokers combined.
But the highest risk was among the under 50s who were nearly 8.5 times as likely to have a heart attack as former and non-smokers of the same age.
This risk fell with increasing age, dropping to a 5-fold difference among 50-65-year-olds, and a 3-fold difference among the over 65s.
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The researchers said the much higher risk of heart attack in younger smokers was not easy to explain, as this age group typically don’t have many of the other contributory risk factors often seen in older smokers, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.
Smoking may therefore be the most important risk factor, they suggest, adding that other research shows that fatty deposits furring up the arteries of smokers differ from those of non-smokers.
The researchers wrote: "All current smokers must be encouraged into smoking cessation therapy to reduce their risk of acute STEMI, with a focus on the youngest smokers whose increased risk is often unrecognised."
Writing in a linked paper, cardiologist Dr Yaron Arbel, of the Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel, agrees efforts need to be directed to prevention and education about smoking.
He said: "Most smokers know that smoking is bad.
"However, exact numbers have a tendency to hit home more often.
"Therefore studies like the present one are especially important."
He added that, as most young smokers don’t have the conventional array of risk factors, commonly used treatments are unlikely to make much difference.
He said: "Our goal should be on providing them with the tools to achieve abstinence.
"In difficult cases, even reducing the number of cigarettes smoked daily might make a difference."
The findings are published in the journal Heart.
