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• Posted January 10, 2025

Childhood Smoking Ups COPD Risk

Young teens might think smoking makes them look cool, but it’s likely to take their breath away in adulthood, a new study says.

Children who start smoking prior to age 15 have a 27% increased risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as adults, compared to those who started smoking later, researchers found in a new study published previously in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation..

“Our study suggests that a person with a childhood smoking history has an increased risk of developing COPD, regardless of current smoking status, smoking duration, cigarette pack years and exposure to secondhand smoke,” senior researcher Dr. Laura Paulin, a pulmonologist at Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, said in a news release from the university.

COPD is a chronic lung disease that makes it increasingly difficult for sufferers to breathe. There’s no cure for the condition, which grows steadily worse over time.

Previous research has shown that COPD is more common in people who started smoking younger than 15, researchers said in background notes.

The new study aimed to examine whether childhood smoking increases COPD risk later in life, even after accounting for a person’s smoking history and exposure to secondhand smoke.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 10,100 participants in an ongoing federal research project into smoking’s health effects, called the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study.

Results showed that about 29% of people who’d started smoking younger than 15 had developed COPD, compared with 21% for those who started at 15 or older and just under 8% for those who never smoked.

Childhood smokers also were more likely to currently smoke, had been smoking for longer, and had greater secondhand smoke exposure.

But even after all those factors were taken into account, childhood smokers still had an increased risk of COPD compared to those who took up smoking later, results show.

“Critical lung development occurs in childhood and early adolescence, making children’s lungs particularly susceptible to damage caused by cigarette smoking,” Paulin said. “These findings highlight the need for additional public health efforts to reduce, and ultimately prevent, childhood smoking.”

More information

The American Lung Association has more on COPD.

SOURCE: COPD Foundation, news release, Jan. 7, 2025