杏吧原创

Think that a quick smoke won鈥檛 do you any harm? Think again. Smoking just one cigarette a day is linked to major risk of heart disease.

That鈥檚 according to researchers who analysed the results of 141 studies, and estimated the relative risk associated with smoking one, five or 20 cigarettes per day.

They found that smoking one cigarette a day was associated with at least a 48 per cent increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in men. Women saw at least a 57 per cent increased risk of CHD.

Both men and women who smoke one cigarette a day have a 30 per cent听increased risk of stroke.

The team, who were led by researchers from the UCL Cancer Institute at University College London, said there is 鈥渘o safe level鈥� of smoking as they urged smokers to quit instead of 鈥渃utting down鈥�.

One a day

They found that among men, half of the risk associated with smoking a pack of 20 comes from just the first cigarette.

In women, a single cigarette accounted for about a third of the risk associated with one pack.

鈥淪moking only about one cigarette per day carries a risk of developing coronary heart disease and stroke much greater than expected: around half that for people who smoke 20 per day,鈥� the researchers said.

This well-conducted study confirms what many epidemiologists have suspected but few among the public have: light smoking creates a substantial risk for heart disease and stroke, said , at the University of Oxford, in a statement to the Science Media Centre.听鈥淭he implication is obvious 鈥� anyone who smokes should stop.鈥�

鈥淗owever, it would be wrong to conclude from this study that cutting down smoking is useless,鈥� Aveyard added. 鈥淭here is more reason to believe that lower cigarette consumption will reduce the risk of chronic lung disease and lung cancer, the other two big causes of early death from smoking, but whether this occurs or not is less clear and the study team did not look at this.

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