Cardiovascular and metabolic changes following 12 weeks of tobacco and nicotine pouch cessation: a Swedish cohort study.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Prospective single-arm before-and-after cohort study without a control group.
PubMed 40241094 · doi:10.1186/s12954-025-01195-y
What was done
Fifty daily snus (tobacco and nicotine pouch) users aged 18–70 years were recruited to abruptly quit. Participants were followed for 12 weeks with home blood pressure (BP) and metabolic marker monitoring. Analyses included 37 participants who quit for at least 3 weeks (mean age 38 ± 10 years; 65% men), of whom 33 maintained cessation through all 12 weeks.
What was found
At 12 weeks post-cessation, mean systolic home BP increased by 3.7 mmHg (95% CI 1.5 to 5.9), mean body weight increased by 1.8 kg (95% CI 1.1 to 2.4), and mean HbA1c increased by 0.7 mmol/mol (95% CI 0.0 to 1.6).
Why it matters
These findings suggest that stopping tobacco or nicotine pouch use does not immediately improve baseline cardiometabolic risk markers, showing short-term increases in systolic blood pressure, weight, and HbA1c instead.
Limits
The study is limited by a small sample size (37 included, 33 completed), a single-arm design without a non-quitting control group, and a short 12-week follow-up period. Diastolic blood pressure, lipid profiles, and other metabolic syndrome markers were not reported in the abstract.
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