Secondhand Smoke Raises Stroke Risk for Spouses of Smokers

Author: Drucilla Dyess

We have long known that smokers endanger their nonsmoking spouses and significant others through secondhand smoke, but recent research has shown that it significantly increases the risk of them having a stroke. In addition, an ex-smoker whose spouse continues to smoke has an even higher risk for stroke.

Maria Glymour, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and her team analyzed data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a National Institute on Aging sponsored survey of U.S. adults nationwide who were 50-plus years of age and married. The more than 16,000 participants were grouped according to smoking habits, and monitored for occurrences of stroke over an average nine-year period of time between 1992 and 2006. During the study period, 1,130 first strokes were reported. The study evaluated cigarette use but did not include the use of cigars or pipe tobacco.

Nonsmokers with spouses that currently smoke were discovered to have a 42 percent higher risk for stroke when compared with those with couples who had never smoked. Ex-smokers married to current smokers had a 72 percent greater risk for stroke. Current smokers had significantly elevated stroke rates compared to those who had never smoked, and the smoking status of spouses did not affect the risk among current smokers.

According to Glymour, "This adds to the growing evidence that secondhand smoke is bad for you, and I hope that it will help people who want to stop smoking to know that it will probably be good for their spouse's health, too." Glymour is a health and society scholar in the department of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City in addition to her Harvard affiliations.

Being married to a former smoker was not found to be associated with any increase in stroke risk compared to having a spouse who had never smoked. Therefore, the data suggests that even though your stroke risk is higher if your spouse smokes, the increased risk is eliminated if your spouse stops smoking. Findings have shown that non-smokers married to former smokers had nearly the same stroke risk as couples who had never smoked.

It was not clear as to how much time would need to pass after a smoker quit before their spouse's stroke risk was fully dissipated. Glymour noted that she and team members believe the risk to the spouse likely begins to decline right away. She explained that this would be consistent with what is already known about stroke and active smoking, which is that if you stop smoking your own health risks decline quickly.

This study is one of few to focus on the possibility of a link between secondhand smoke and stroke risk and the data indicates that the association is very real and strong.