Heart attack: young smokers at risk

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Smoking is harmful to your health - and most smokers are aware of this. What they may not have realized before: Young people under the age of 50 in particular pose a massive risk to their heart through smoking and thus increase their risk of heart attacks.

Smoking hardens the blood vessels and leads to so-called arteriosclerosis. Possible consequences of the now inflexible bloodstream: stroke, peripheral arterial occlusive disease and, of course, myocardial infarction. Amalia Lloyd from the University of Sheffield and her colleagues have investigated whether the age of the smoker plays a role in heart health.

The scientists evaluated the data from 1,700 patients who had suffered a heart attack. 48.5 percent of them were smokers, 27.2 percent ex-smokers and 24.2 percent never smokers.

8.5 times the risk of heart attack

There was already a clear difference in the average age of the participants when they had a heart attack: While the average age among the test subjects was 57, the average age of the ex- and non-smokers at this point in time was almost 69 years.

Spread across all age groups, smoking tripled the likelihood of having a heart attack. The smoking of the glowing stalk had a much stronger effect on smokers under 50: The risk increased by a factor of 8.5 for them - compared to never-smokers of the same age.

After that, smoking did not have that drastic effect: Among the 50 to 65 year olds, the increase factor still reached a value of 5.2, among the over 65 year olds of 3.1.

Gained lifetime

Nevertheless, it is of course worthwhile for older people to quit smoking as well. A study by the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg showed that even those who smoke their last cigarette when they are over 60 are still doing something good for their cardiovascular health. On average, ex-smokers die two years later from heart attacks, strokes and the like, even at an advanced age, as unteachable peers who continue to smoke.

Even Lloyd and her colleagues could not find any major differences between ex-smokers and never-smokers - regardless of the age group. However, the study did not ask how long the former smokers had already renounced the glowing stick.

Source: Lloyd a. et al .: Pronounced increase in risk of acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction in younger smokers, Heart 2016. doi: 10.1136 / heartjnl-2016-309595

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