Weighing the benefits
An analysis of data from the Framingham Offspring Study — a long-term study that follows children of participants in the original Framingham Heart Study — may have answered a question that has troubled individuals considering stopping smoking: Do the health effects of any weight gained after quitting outweigh the known cardiovascular benefits of smoking cessation? The report in the March 13 issue of JAMA concludes that the benefits of stopping smoking far exceed the risks from any associated weight gain. “Among people without diabetes, those who stopped smoking had a 50 percent reduction in the risk for heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death, and accounting for any weight increase didn’t change that risk reduction,” said Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Medicine James Meigs of the General Medicine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). “In patients with diabetes — among whom weight gain is a particular concern — we saw the same pattern of...