Ex-smokers have higher risks for bowel diseases

Compared to people who've never smoked, former smokers have a higher risk of developing two inflammatory bowel diseases, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, according to a new study. "The increased risk of ulcerative colitis following smoking cessation persisted even two decades after cessation," said Dr. Leslie Higuchi, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.

Following up on earlier shorter-term studies of the subject, Higuchi and her team collected information from nearly 230,000 female nurses who were surveyed about their behavior and health status from 1976 and 1989. Over time, Higuchi and her colleagues found, 144 out of about 124,000 never-smokers developed Crohn's disease, while 117 out of 51,000 ex-smokers and 75 out of 53,500 smokers also developed the autoimmune disease. After taking into account other risk factors, such as age, weight and hormone therapy use, they determined that smokers were 90 percent more likely to develop Crohn's than women who never smoked and ex-smokers were 35 percent more likely.

 The more people smoked, the higher their risk. For instance, women who had smoked a pack a day for 10 to 25 years were 1.7 times as likely to develop Crohn's as someone who never smoked, while women who smoked a pack a day for more than 25 years were 2.3 times as likely. The researchers found that smoking was also tied to ulcerative colitis, an inflammation of the colon that can cause pain, diarrhea and bleeding. Higuchi's group found that 190 non-smokers, 167 former smokers and 43 current smokers developed colitis during the study period. The picture became more complicated when the researchers compared ex-smokers to current smokers, as quitters actually had a 50 percent higher risk of colitis than people who continued the habit. Current smokers had the same risk as the women who never smoked, something that has been shown in other studies.