Quitting smoking could reduce heart disease risk

Those women also have a 20-percent lower risk of death from smoking-related cancers within that time period.

Harvard researchers examined more than 100,000 female participants between 1980 and 2004 and found that, 20 years after quitting smoking, some women's risk of dying from cardiovascular disease dropped even further, comparable to non-smokers.

The study is published in the latest issue of the journal of the American Medical Association.