Smokers beware: If you have breast cancer, quit now

A recent study from scientists at the University of California, San Francisco reveals that the survival rate for this deadly disease is drastically lower for smokers than non-smokers.

It’s no great secret that smoking is bad for your health, but a recent study shows just how bad it can really be. According to a report from Newsmax, scientists from the University of California, San Francisco have shown that women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and continue to smoke cigarettes have a significantly lower survival rate than nonsmokers and people who give up the pack.

According to Michael Passarelli, a cancer epidemiologist from UCSF, women that quit smoking as soon as they are diagnosed have a substantially better chance of surviving than those who continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Smokers were also shown to have a higher risk of developing respiratory cancers and heart disease, even potentially leading to a stroke.

Passarelli and his team examined medical data from over 20,000 women between the ages of 20 and 79. Each of the women in the sample had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 1988 and 2008.

The researchers contacted 4,500 women six years following their diagnosis and asked them about their smoking habits. A follow-up of the study spanning 12 years revealed that nearly 6,800 women died, and 2,900 succumbed to breast cancer.

The risk of death was 25 percent higher for active smokers who were smoking at least a year prior to their diagnosis than for nonsmokers. Smokers were also shown to be more likely to die from respiratory cancer or other respiratory illnesses, as well as cardiovascular disease.

The study also showed that it’s never too late to quit smoking. Researchers compared data from women who had quit following a breast cancer diagnosis to that of continued smokers, and found that women who quit were 33 percent less likely to die from breast cancer.

The risk of dying from respiratory cancer for women who quit smoking was even lower than for active smokers – a reduction of 60 percent.

“Oncologists should be very aggressive about getting their patients to stop smoking,” said Passarelli. The study’s findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

A UCSF press release describing the details of the study can be found here.