“For smokers with asthma, quitting smoking can improve lung function test scores by more than 15 percent in less than two months.” This finding and others appear in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

The study included 21 asthmatic smokers, aged 18 to 60.  Ten of them quit smoking for ten weeks, and the 11 others continued to smoke.

“The improvement in lung function seen after smoking cessation was clinically significant.  It demonstrates that there is a reversible component to the harmful effects of smoking on the airways in asthma, according to research Dr. Neil C. Thomson, of the departments of respiratory medicine and immunology at the University of Glasgow.”

Previous studies had already shown that 25-50% of adults with asthma are current smokers, and that these people have more severe asthma symptoms, higher rates of emergency room visits and hospitalizations for asthma, more rapid loss of lung function over several years, and respond less well to inhaled corticosteroids.

That’s why to quit.  For how to quit…

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