Arteries benefit from smoking cessation: study

DALLAS (Reuters) - A smoker's arteries can lose their tobacco-induced stiffness after the habit is kicked but it can take them up to a decade to get back to normal levels, according to a new study released on Monday.

"Our study reinforces the message that smoking cessation is an important step smokers can take to enhance the quality and length of their lives ... The longer one stops smoking the better," said Noor Ahmed Jatoi, lead author of the study in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The study looked at 554 people in three groups: current smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers.

"We categorized ex-smokers according to how long they were off cigarettes - under one year, more than one but less than 10 years and more than 10 years," said Jatoi, a Ph.D. student at Trinity Health Sciences Center and Hypertension Clinic at St. James's Hospital, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

The researchers then applied a measurement of arterial stiffness called an Arterial Pulse Wave Analysis to the participants. Stiffness in arteries can raise a person's blood pressure and is linked to cardiovascular diseases.

"They found that current and ex-smokers of only one year had significantly higher stiffness measurements compared with non-smokers," the American Heart Association said in a statement.

"They found some improvement after one to 10 years, but arterial stiffness parameters only reached normal levels after more than a decade of smoking cessation," the association said.