Abstract
The data from a study was analyzed to see the effect of smoking on non-life-threatening disease such as mobility, joint pains and psychological disorders. A longitudinal sample, by merging two studies, was created with five groups to predict the effect of smoking over a period of 34 years. The severity, based on scoring should that there was a increasing effect of smoking on the trajectories of non-life-threatening illnesses.
Introduction
Smoking is considered as a significant contributor to life-threatening diseases including cardiovascular diseases. As the population, especially smokers, reaches old age, they are subjected to debilitating health issues such as non-life-threatening disease. In Finland, a quarter century follow-up study showed an unambiguous relationship between smoking and non-life-threatening illnesses (Strandberg et al., 2008). Such type of correlation was not available for Swedish population, so, data from two nationwide studies was combined and analyzed to determine relation between smoking and non-life-threatening diseases.
Research Design
Sampling methods
Sub-sampling was done, to take data of persons between 30-50 years old, by combining the data from LNU of 1968, 1981 1991 and 2000 and SWEOLD of 2002. Subjects who consistently participated from 1968 and continued for at-least two more surveys and were more than 50% of the total participants at the end were involved thus, serving for almost 34 years of follow-up from 1968.
Data collection method
Specifics
Specifically, for mobility, the score was based on a 100 meter walk, 100 meter run and climb stairs without difficulties, degree of pain in hands, elbows, knees, shoulders, back and other areas for musculoskeletal pain and, anxiety, anguish, nervousness, fatigue, depression and sleep disorder for psychological distress. The subjects were asked to give scores on the level of pain or distress from a scale of zero (no pain) to six (severe pain). To add complexity, data was further segregated for male and female populations. All the data collected was run into bi- and multinomial regression analysis to find the significance for non-life-threatening diseases between non-smokers and smokers. The out-come variables were mobility, musculoskeletal pain and psychological distress whereas age, gender and education were used as fixed predictors for individual outcome (Neda, A., Benjamin, S., 2013). The data analysis shows a clear-cut significance between smoking trajectories and the increase of non-life-threatening diseases. As the population aged, the trajectories of the score for smokers significantly increased than non-smokers. Trajectories for subjects who quitted smoking and enter old age also suffered from the non-life-threatening diseases.
References
Strandberg, A.Y., Strandberg, T.E., Pitkala, K., Salomaa, V.V., Tilvis, R.S., Miettinen, T.A., (2008). The effect of smoking in midlife on health-related quality of life in old age: a 26-year prospective study. Arch. Intern. Med. 168, 1968-1974. Retrieved from http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=414522
Sarna, L., Bialous, S.A., Cooley, M.E., Jun, H.J., Feskanich, D., (2008). Impact of smoking and smoking cessation on health-related quality of life in women in the Nurses' Health Study. Qual. Life Res. 17, 1217–1227. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11136-008-9404-8
