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Paris: Researchers are still discovering how smoking continues to harm people’s health even years after they have quit, and a new study reveals on Wednesday the long-lasting effect of tobacco on the immune system.
Although the tobacco industry has long struggled to hide the dangers of smoking, tobacco is now known to kill more than eight million people a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
But the countless ways the habit harms the body are still coming to light.
The new study, published in the journal Nature, found that smoking disrupts the immune system, which protects the body from infections, for much longer than previously thought.
In particular, he highlighted changes in what is called adaptive immunity, which develops over time as specialized cells in the body remember how to fight foreign pathogens they have encountered before.
The findings were based on analysis of blood and other samples taken from 1,000 healthy people in France more than a decade ago.
Smoking was found to have more influence on adaptive immunity than other factors such as amount of sleep or physical activity, the researchers said.
The study also confirmed previous research that had shown the effect of smoking on “innate immunity,” which is the body’s first line of defense against invading pathogens.
While innate immunity recovered immediately after people stopped smoking, adaptive immunity remained active for years, even decades after they quit, according to the study.
The sample size was too small to give an accurate timeline of how long these changes last.
The researchers emphasized that the effect wears off, so the sooner people stop it, the better.
Of course, it’s still better “for long-term immunity to never start smoking,” the study’s lead author, Violaine Saint-Andre of France’s Pasteur Institute, said at a news conference.
The researchers couldn’t say with certainty what consequences these changes may have on health. But they hypothesized that it could affect people’s risk of infections, cancer or autoimmune diseases.
The sooner the better
Another study, published last week in the journal NEJM Evidence, aimed to determine the extent to which quitting smoking was related to a lower risk of disease and premature death.
It covered 1.5 million people in the United States, Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom, some of them current smokers, some who never started, and everyone in between.
According to the study, when people stop smoking, it takes 10 years for their average life expectancy to return to the same level as that of non-smokers.
Once again, the researchers emphasized the importance of quitting smoking as soon as possible; Some benefits were evident already three years after quitting the habit.
The effect was notable regardless of the age at which people stopped smoking; however, the benefits were more pronounced for those under 40 years of age.
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