Accelerating Smoking Elimination Could Prevent Millions of Deaths by 2050

FRIDAY, Oct. 4, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A substantial smoking-attributable burden can be avoided by accelerating the pace of smoking elimination, according to a study published in the October issue of The Lancet Public Health.

Stein Emil Vollset, M.D., M.P.H., from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Bergen, and fellow GBD 2021 Tobacco Forecasting Collaborators used the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Future Health Scenarios platform to forecast the effects of three smoking prevalence scenarios on all-cause and cause-specific years of life lost (YLLs) and life expectancy at birth until 2050. The analysis included data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 reference life table.

The researchers found that the global age-standardized smoking prevalence was estimated to be 28.5 percent among males and 5.96 percent among females in 2022. In the reference scenario, from 2022 to 2050, smoking prevalence declined by 25.9 percent among males and 30.0 percent among females. Under this scenario, a cumulative 29.3 billion overall YLLs were forecast among males and 22.2 billion YLLs were forecast among females. Under this scenario, life expectancy at birth increased from 73.6 years in 2022 to 78.3 years in 2050. The Elimination-2023 scenario yielded a projected 2.04 billion fewer cumulative YLLs by 2050 versus the reference scenario, and life expectancy at birth would increase to 77.6 years for males and 81.0 years for females. Lastly, the Elimination-2050 scenario yielded a forecasted 735 million and 141 million cumulative YLLs avoided among males and females, respectively, while life expectancy in 2050 would increase to 77.1 years for males and 80.8 years for females.

“Implementation of new tobacco control policies is crucial in avoiding additional smoking-attributable burden in the coming decades and to ensure that the gains won over the past three decades are not lost,” the authors write.

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