Smoking status and self-rated health: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Smoking is one of the most important factors in reducing health. The aim of this study was to undertake a systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between former and current smoking with self-rated health.

Methods

PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched using the search strategy. The search was limited to English studies published by March 2022. Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval were extracted from the eligible articles and these were pooled together with the random-effects method. Subgroup analyses were performed based on smoking status (former and current smoking) and gender. Heterogeneity and publication bias was assessed.

Results

Fifty-two articles were included in this study. In the relationship between smoking and poor self-rated health, the odds ratio was 1.40 with a 95% confidence interval (CI) between 1.33–1.48. In the association between current smoking and poor self-rated health, the odds ratio was 1.51 with a 95% CI between 1.39–1.63.

Discussion

Smoking is associated with increased poor self-rated health and therefore in the field of prevention health professionals must inform the community more than before about the consequences of smoking.

KEYWORDS:

• Systematic review
• meta-analysis
• smoking
• self-rated health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14659891.2023.2297068

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.