Who will quit smoking after diagnosing diabetes?

Smoking is the major leading preventable cause of chronic diseases. Smokers with diabetes have more problems with dental disease, bleeding gums and ulcers. In addition, smoking will increase blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and decrease the ability to use insulin, making it harder to control diabetes. However, little is known about who tends to quit smoking after his/her diabetes diagnosis. The objective of this study is to closely evaluate factors associated with smoking cessation among diabetes patients. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2008 survey was used in this study and 1,208 diabetes patients were recruited. All analyses were weighted to account for the complex sampling design. Around 48.5% of diabetes patients were smokers. However, there were only 278 diabetes patients smoked regularly when they were diagnosed with diabetes and only 36.6% of them quit smoking after their diabetes diagnosis. The factors associated with smoking cessation after a diabetes diagnosis were evaluated using a logistic regression model. We observed that diabetes patients who were older (OR=3.26, 95%CI=1.26-8.45, in 10-year increments), with longer years since diabetes diagnosis (OR=1.89, 95%CI=1.09-3.28, in 10-year increments) and with shorter smoking year (OR=0.38, 95%CI=0.17-0.86, in 10-year increments) tended to quit after diabetes diagnosis. No significant differences were observed in race, gender, education, income or marital status. Custom smoking cessation interventions are needed in order to effectively decrease smoking rates in the diabetes patients. This study suggests that smoking cessation interventions should target those younger with longer smoking history and shorter diabetes history diabetes patients.