Tobacco and the immune system: harmful effects 10 to 15 years after stopping smoking. “Smoking modifies adaptive immunity in a persistent manner,” concludes a study published this Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Once you have stopped smoking, you have to wait ten years to regain a life expectancy comparable to someone who has not smoked at all. This work marks an important advance in understanding the deleterious health effects of smoking which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), kills some eight million people per year worldwide.