(HealthDay News) — More than one in four adults with cardiovascular disease report current tobacco use, according to a study published online June 9 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Lindsay M. Reynolds, Ph.D., from the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, and colleagues examined the prevalence of tobacco use in adults using the nationally representative Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study from 2013 to 2014 (wave 1) through 2016 to 2018 (wave 4). Data were included for 2,615 participants with self-reported CVD at wave 1.

The researchers found that 28.9% reported current tobacco use, equivalent to about 6.2 million adults. The most commonly used tobacco product was cigarettes followed by cigars and electronic cigarettes (82.8, 23.7, and 23.3%, respectively). Among participants with prevalent cardiovascular disease, e-cigarette use without concurrent cigarette use was uncommon (1.1%). Younger age, male sex, lower education level and lack of knowledge about the correlation between smoking and cardiovascular disease were factors associated with tobacco use. Compared with women, men with prevalent cardiovascular disease were less likely to use e-cigarettes (odds ratio, 0.70). Among cigarette users with cardiovascular disease, there was a <5% decrease in cigarette use and a 0.5% increase in e-cigarette use between waves 1 and 4. About 10% of participants were in formal tobacco cessation programs.

“It was also concerning that despite the well-documented benefits of stopping tobacco use after a cardiovascular disease diagnosis, few people had stopped smoking over the course of the five-year study,” a coauthor said in a statement.

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