Even One Cigarette Per Day Raises Cardiovascular Risk

Experts warns that just a single cigarette a day ’causes a much higher risk of heart disease and stroke than previously thought’
Just one cigarette a day carries nearly half the risk for heart attack and stroke as smoking a full pack of 20, according to a large-scale study published Thursday.
The team behind the study say that the findings emphasise that cutting out cigarettes, rather than just cutting down, is necessary to dramatically reduce the chance of cardiovascular problems – a key cause of premature death among smokers.
“There seems to be a belief that cutting down a lot greatly reduces your chance of getting all smoking related disorders,” said Allan Hackshaw, co-author of the research from University College London. “Whilst that is true for cancer, it doesn’t seem to be true for heart disease or stroke.”
Hackshaw and colleagues describe how they looked at data from 55 published reports, covering 141 studies carried out between 1946 and 2015 and involving several million people in total, to examine the impact of smoking on coronary heart disease or stroke.
While it might be expected that the risks of coronary heart disease or stroke for those smoking one a day would be about 5% of that for those smoking 20 a day as is the case for lung cancer the risk was in fact much higher. For both cardiovascular conditions the risks of smoking, compared with not smoking at all, were higher for women than men.
The team analysed the studies to explore how much the risk of coronary heart disease or stroke increased for those smoking on average one cigarette a day, five a day or 20 a day, compared with those who had never smoked. The team then pooled the results and analysed how smoking one or five cigarettes a day affected health compared with smoking 20 a day.