Quantifying for the first time the impact of anti-smoking measures on lung cancer mortality, a new study that used a Yale mathematical model finds that more than 800,000 lives were saved in the United States over a 25-year period. The authors also note that 2.5 million people who died from smoking-related lung cancer in this same period might have survived if stricter tobacco control measures had been in effect.
Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health and more than a dozen other universities and institutes formed the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) consortium and used various mathematical models, including one developed at Yale, to analyze trends in cigarette smoking and quantify the impact of various tobacco control measures. Detailed cigarette smoking histories were recreated for generations dating back to 1890 and significant events, such as the U.S. Surgeon General’s landmark report in the mid 1960s on the dangers of tobacco use, were factored in.
The researchers found that gradual changes in smoking behavior over a 25-year period beginning in 1975 resulted in approximately 824,000 fewer lung cancer deaths, 603,000 of which were among men. Models used by other team members produced similar results, showing tobacco control averted about one third of potentially avoidable lung cancer deaths.
“Tobacco-control strategies in the United States have saved hundreds of thousands of lives from lung cancer death,” said co-author Theodore R. Holford, a Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Public Health in Biostatistics at the School of Public health and leader of Yale’s CISNET team. “But there is still much more that needs to be done because globally millions continue to die from lung cancer caused by smoking. Most lung cancer deaths are preventable and the challenge is to find effective ways to reduce cigarette smoking.”
In the years after the Surgeon General’s report, smoking habits were increasingly influenced by measures such as increased taxation on tobacco, public health campaigns and restricting areas where people can smoke.
Still, the authors note, more needs to be done if deaths from lung cancer are to be further curtailed. “The magnitude of what has been achieved by tobacco control should encourage us to redouble efforts to further reduce the cost in life and treasure from cigarette smoking,” Holford said.
While other factors such as genetic polymorphisms contribute to lung cancer, the vast majority of cases result from smoking. Smoking-related diseases other than lung cancer were not part of the research.
The study was funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute and appears online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.