Abstract

Background

We simulated tobacco control and pharmacological strategies for preventing cardiovascular deaths in India, the country that is expected to experience more cardiovascular deaths than any other over the next decade.

Methods and Findings

A microsimulation model was developed to quantify the differential effects of various tobacco control measures and pharmacological therapies on myocardial infarction and stroke deaths stratified by age, gender, and urban/rural status for 2013 to 2022. The model incorporated population-representative data from India on multiple risk factors that affect myocardial infarction and stroke mortality, including hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease. We also included data from India on cigarette smoking, bidi smoking, chewing tobacco, and secondhand smoke. According to the model’s results, smoke-free legislation and tobacco taxation would likely be the most effective strategy among a menu of tobacco control strategies (including, as well, brief cessation advice by health care providers, mass media campaigns, and an advertising ban) for reducing myocardial infarction and stroke deaths over the next decade, while cessation advice would be expected to be the least effective strategy at the population level. In combination, these tobacco control interventions could avert 25% of myocardial infarctions and strokes (95% CI: 17%–34%) if the effects of the interventions are additive. These effects are substantially larger than would be achieved through aspirin, antihypertensive, and statin therapy under most scenarios, because of limited treatment access and adherence; nevertheless, the impacts of tobacco control policies and pharmacological interventions appear to be markedly synergistic, averting up to one-third of deaths from myocardial infarction and stroke among 20- to 79-y-olds over the next 10 y. Pharmacological therapies could also be considerably more potent with further health system improvements.

Conclusions

Smoke-free laws and substantially increased tobacco taxation appear to be markedly potent population measures to avert future cardiovascular deaths in India. Despite the rise in co-morbid cardiovascular disease risk factors like hyperlipidemia and hypertension in low- and middle-income countries, tobacco control is likely to remain a highly effective strategy to reduce cardiovascular deaths.

Discussion

Substantial evidence links tobacco use to CVD, yet tobacco use in India and several other LMICs is on the rise . This worsening trend led the UN High Level Meeting on Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases to recommend that countries accelerate implementation of the FCTC. Our findings indicate that full implementation of key FCTC articles in India would yield substantial reductions in mortality from myocardial infarctions and stroke, despite projected increases in other risk factors for CVD such as hypertension and diabetes. Far from achieving “diminishing returns,” vigorous implementation of these tobacco control policies would be expected to avert 25% of all predicted CVD deaths, equivalent to over 9 million averted deaths, over the decade 2013 and 2022 under a reasonable set of modeling assumptions.

Furthermore, the population-level benefits of implementing strong tobacco control policies were five times greater than a similarly aggressive program to implement pharmacological interventions (Figure 3), assuming that India’s implementation of pharmacological therapy is no faster than in high-income nations like the UK. However, critically, we would anticipate additive benefits of implementing pharmacological interventions concurrently with strong tobacco control policies: the combined package of both pharmacological and tobacco control interventions would not be redundant, and could avert nearly a third of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality over the next decade by tackling multiple risk factors for myocardial infarctions and strokes.

Among the interventions we simulated, smoke-free legislation and tax increases on both cigarettes and bidis were the most effective at the population level. Smoke-free legislation, an advertising ban, and a mass media campaign had wide confidence intervals because their degree of population effectiveness was subject to the degree of effective enforcement.

We used, to our knowledge for the first time, population-representative data to represent the co-morbid risks of CVD among both urban and rural populations in India, and among both men and women in multiple agegroups. We found that nearly all sectors of Indian society were likely to benefit from both tobacco control and pharmacological therapies. However, the populations benefiting most were urban males and persons in the 60- to 69-y-old age category. This is due to the higher baseline prevalence of co-morbid risk factors among urban males and this older age group; hence, these populations achieve greater risk reduction from the simulated interventions.

Conclusion

Given the complexities of India’s tobacco and CVD epidemics, it is important to understand how heterogeneities within the large Indian population may affect both the risk of disease as well as the impact of various policy and health care interventions. In this study, we provide to our knowledge the first model that incorporates population-representative data from India disaggregated by age, gender, and location for all of the major CVD risk factors as well as for specific types of tobacco use. Prior models have either used “average” Indian or regional disease rates, have not captured various types of tobacco use other than smoking, or have not incorporated the multiple risk factors affecting CVD in addition to tobacco use. This means that, for the first time, we can study some health disparities in CVD and in tobacco use within the large and varied Indian population, as well as heterogeneity in the impact of proposed interventions. These results provide clear justification for India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to engage in greater enforcement of the FCTC and the Indian legislation that enacts the FCTC in the country, the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act.

Our simulations suggest that the implementation of recommended tobacco control interventions in India would yield substantial and rapid health benefits, but those benefits may accumulate most among males, urban dwellers, and older adults. Effective implementation of FCTC provisions remains a major challenge in India. At present, smoke-free legislation in India is not comprehensive and is poorly enforced . There is little indication that brief cessation advice is routinely administered, and additional resources may be required to strengthen implementation. Tobacco taxes in India would also need to be substantially increased and harmonized between different tobacco products to comply with WHO recommendations, and achieve desired population-level disease reductions . Cigarettes are currently taxed according to their physical length in India, meaning that uniform tax increases will encourage product substitution unless large price differentials between products are addressed.

Optimizing preventive interventions for CVD remains a significant challenge for developing countries like India. Our model demonstrates synergies between tobacco control and pharmacological therapies for key CVD risk factors. It does not, however, support the idea that enhanced prevalence of key risk factors renders diminished results from tobacco control interventions. Rather, policymakers should take note that fuller and faster implementation of existing FCTC provisions would likely be a substantial boon to efforts to reduce CVD mortality in India and other LMICs.

Source: PLOS