People who quit smoking significantly reduce their risk of suffering a heart attack, a new study has shown.

In fact, those who manage to quit see their risk fall to the same level as that of a non-smoker.

US scientists looked at the risk of suffering an adverse heart-related event in over 13,000 people in Europe, America and Asia over a two-year period. Of these, almost 3,000 were active smokers, over 3,000 were past smokers and more than 7,000 were never smokers.

The study found that people who currently smoked and those who had smoked in the past were much more likely to have severely blocked coronary arteries - increasing their risk of suffering from coronary artery disease.

It also found that rates of heart attack or death were almost twice as high in smokers compared to never smokers.

However, the study showed that people who had smoked in the past, but had given up the habit, had the same rates of heart attack or death as never smokers, despite the fact that they were more likely to develop coronary artery disease.

"Our results show that quitting smoking does not reduce the amount of disease smoking causes in the coronary arteries, but it does reduce the risk of heart attack and death to the levels of non-smokers.

"Our study was the first to demonstrate that the presence and severity of coronary blockages do not go away with quitting smoking, but that the risk of heart attack and death does," the scientists said.

They acknowledged that further studies are required to determine why this apparent protective effect occurs, but emphasised that ‘it's never too late to quit smoking'.

Details of these findings were presented at the 2013 Congress of the European Society of Cardiology in the Netherlands.

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