The Medical News Today – James McIntosh
“Parents play a prominent role in molding the adult their children become, and new research suggests this is true for health as well as character. A study has found children exposed to their parents’ smoking are at a greater risk of developing heart disease in adulthood than the children of nonsmoking parents. Middle-aged couple smoking. Parents can reduce their children’s risk of heart disease by not smoking in the home and smoking well away from their children. The new study, published in Circulation, adds to the growing evidence demonstrating that parents smoking can have a long-term effect on their children’s cardiovascular health. “To gain more insight on the long-term harms of passive smoke exposure in early life, we undertook the first investigation of whether parental smoking and smoking hygiene in childhood is related to the presence of carotid atherosclerotic plaque in adulthood,” write the authors. For the study, the researchers followed participants in the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study – a prospective study conducted across five major cities in Finland, designed to examine the early-life risk factors of cardiovascular disease.”(more)