Modeling the impact of changes in tobacco use on individual disease risks

Reduced Risk Products (RRPs) do not burn tobacco and produce lower levels of toxicants than in cigarette smoke. The long-term effects of using RRPs on health are difficult to assess in a pre-market setting and a modeling approach is required to quantify harm reduction. The Population Health Impact Model (Weitkunat et al., 2015) follows a hypothetical population of individuals over time, creating their tobacco use histories and, based on these, estimating relative and absolute risks of lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Linking the tobacco use to the risk profile allow us to assess how the relative and absolute risks of these diseases vary between individuals aged 20, 30, 40 or 50 at baseline who have never smoked or who initiated smoking at 19 years old and either continued to smoke, quit smoking, or switched to RRPs with varying degrees of harm reduction. The simulations suggest that, for smokers in their 20s-30s quitting, or switching to RRP primarily prevents the accrual of risk, while in their 40s-50s it reduces risk. Though tobacco prevention has been the primary approach to limit smoking-related diseases, RRPs can also substantially reduce risks in individuals who do not quit.