Giving Up Smoking Lowers Risk Of Cognitive Decline

Quit smoking early on to minimize the risk of neurological disease, say researchers in South Korea.

AsianScientist (Sep. 19, 2018) – In a study published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, researchers in South Korea reported that men who quit smoking had a lower risk of contracting dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Smoking is strongly associated with the development of a variety of diseases, including lung cancer and neurological decline. While health authorities have campaigned for individuals to quit smoking, the benefits of smoking cessation remain unclear.

Hence, scientists at Seoul National University in South Korea performed analysis of 46,140 men aged 60 years and older from the Korean National Health Insurance System—National Health Screening Cohort, a population‐based national health screening program which ran from 2002 to 2013.

They found that, compared with continual smokers, long-term quitters and men who had never smoked had 14 percent and 19 percent lower risks for dementia, respectively. Non-smokers also were also 18 percent less susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease compared with continual smokers. Furthermore, long-term quitters and non-smokers were 32 percent and 29 percent less likely of developing vascular dementia compared with continual smokers.

“Smoking cessation was clearly linked with a reduced dementia risk in the long term, indicating that smokers should be encouraged to quit in order to benefit from this decreased risk,” said senior author Dr. Park Sang Min of Seoul National University.



The article can be found at: Choi et al. (2018) Effect of Smoking Cessation on the Risk of Dementia: A Longitudinal Study.

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Source: Wiley; Photo: Pexels.
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