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Women Lead Senior Citizens to Quit Smoking and Stay
Quit Easier
March 15, 2006 – Senior citizens, and in particular
older women, seem to find it easier to quit smoking cigarettes and the
stay off them than younger people. Although, this study finds older men
and women are more likely to quit if they have recently received a
diagnosis of cancer.
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on
Health & Medicine |
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The study results showed that older people are far
more likely to successfully quit smoking than has been indicated in
other studies of smoking cessation in younger people, according to
researchers at Duke University Medical Center.
The researchers said that such findings hint that
the reasons older people give up smoking might be quite different than
those of younger people, although their study was not designed to elicit
such motives.
"The patterns of smoking cessation in older people
are quite different than previous research has shown with regard to
smoking cessation in younger populations," said Heather Whitson, MD, a
geriatrics fellow at Duke's Center for the Study of Aging.
"More research is needed, but with greater
understanding of motivations for quitting in later life, better
cessation programs could be developed for this population. This would be
particularly true if we could determine quality of life benefits and
longevity for older people who quit."
The study findings appear in the March 2006 edition
of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The research was
supported by Duke's division of geriatrics.
Whitson's team sought to learn whether the factors
that best predict smoking cessation in younger smokers would also be
associated with smoking cessation in older people.
The team selected a group of 573 elderly smokers
from the North Carolina Established Populations for Epidemiologic
Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) database, and reviewed those participants
according to their reported smoking habits for a maximum period of ten
years.
The North Carolina EPESE database is a
collaborative, prospective study that was funded by the National
Institute on Aging.
The database includes epidemiologic information on
4,162 racially and socio-economically diverse older people living in a
contiguous five-county area in central North Carolina. Participants'
health information was collected over a period of ten years, from 1986
to 1996.
To be included in this current study, the EPESE
participants had to have been regular smokers upon enrollment in EPESE
and to have survived at least three years from the point of enrollment.
Based upon their smoking behaviors at follow-up interviews for the EPESE
study, the 573 observational study participants were categorized as
"quitters" (100 participants) or "nonquitters" (473 participants).
The researchers found that female elderly
participants were more likely to quit smoking than men in their age
group. Additionally, participants who quit smoking were more likely to
have received a serious health diagnosis, such as cancer or heart
disease, although the measurement did not achieve statistical
significance, the researchers said.
The majority of older people who quit smoking
during the first three years of the study remained quitters until the
time of their death or at least until the end of the EPESE study period
– at which time, the health tracking period ended.
Of those who quit smoking by the first follow-up
session, only 16 percent returned to smoking, which contrasts sharply
with previous smoking cessation research that has shown 35 to 45 percent
recidivism rates in younger populations within two years of quitting.
The researchers acknowledge that the low recidivism
rate in the elderly could, in part, be due to higher mortality rates,
but that it could also reflect a fundamental difference in smokers who
change their habits at an advanced age, they said.
"Something novel may be motivating those older
people who do give up smoking - either they are really motivated to give
up the habit or factors outside of their control are influencing the
decision to quit," Whitson said.
Other factors that might influence quitting include
loss of transportation (therefore loss of access to cigarettes), onset
of dementia, financial constraints or a move to assisted living or to a
relative's home where smoking is not permitted.
Mitchell Heflin, M.D. and Bruce Burchett, Ph.D.,
both of Duke, are also authors on the study.
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