Biomarkers of improved health outcomes after smoking cessation

Cigarette smoking remains as a major preventable cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. Smoking causes many diseases and use of tobacco products is known to have detrimental effects on the user, leading to the causation of numerous adverse health outcomes.

Evaluation of the user's risk following cessation of tobacco products has shown to vary with the affected organ, reflecting the temporal dynamics of the underlying disease processes. The potential utility of biomarkers for smoking cessation can provide a measure of the damage from use of tobacco products and the impact on affected organs after cessation of tobacco products.

For this review we focus on three common sets of diseases for which there are potential biomarkers of improved health within a relatively short period of time after smoking cessation: cardiovascular disease (CVD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and oral disease. For each set of diseases, we provide an overview including disease burden and epidemiology; a discussion of disease process/pathogenesis; potential biomarkers of improved health after smoking cessation with examples of their application; and future directions.