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Results
of a new study show postmenopausal women who have never smoked,
or who had quit smoking 10 years earlier, may have a reduced
risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
The latest
research serves as additional evidence of the detrimental
relationship between smoking and the disabling disease.
In a massive
Iowa Women's Health Study that ran from 1986 to 1997, researchers
followed 31,336 rheumatoid arthritis-free women, aged 55 to
69. By study's end, 158 cases of rheumatoid arthritis were
identified.
The researchers,
reporting in the American Journal of Medicine, found that
current smokers, and those who had quit within the past year,
were at an increased risk for rheumatoid arthritis, while
women who had never smoked, and those who quit more than 10
years before the study's beginning, were not at an increased
risk.
They also
found a link between duration and intensity of smoking and
risk of rheumatoid arthritis, even after making adjustments
for factors of age, marital status, occupation, body mass
index, age at menopause, oral contraceptive use, hormone replacement
therapy, alcohol and coffee consumption.
Source:
Arthritis Week
of May 12, 2002
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