Kicking the habit may be contagious, study finds

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nothing may feel lonelier than trying to quit smoking, but in fact, people kick the habit in clusters, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The same team of experts who found that obesity may be socially contagious said they found similar patterns among smokers, with people clearly influencing others in their social and family networks.

In fact, the most isolated people are now those who remain the most addicted as their personal networks get pushed to the fringes, they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This study tells us that social relationships have a critical impact on health behaviors and decisions, and that people are strongly influenced by those in their social sphere," said National Institute on Aging director Dr. Richard Hodes, whose institute paid for the study.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School in Boston and Dr. James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, studied 12,067 people who have been taking part in the Framingham study -- a study of the health and habits of nearly an entire town in Massachusetts -- for the past 32 years.

"We've found that when you analyze large social networks, entire pockets of people who might not know each other all quit smoking at once," Christakis said in a statement. "What appears to happen is that people quit in droves."

Smoking is becoming increasingly less common in the United States. In 1965, 42 percent of the population smoked, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number has fallen to around 20 percent.

When the Framingham study started, around 37 percent of adults smoked.