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If you begin smoking at an early age and continue to smoke throughout your life you have tripled the risk of developing a severe progression in multiple sclerosis.

Although previous studies have found a link between cigarette smoking and an increased risk of MS, there has been no research to date on the association between smoking and the clinical course of the disease. Using the British General Practice Research Database (GPRD), Hernán and a team of investigators from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston University, and the University of California School of Medicine at Irvine found that cigarette smoking, one of the most important modifiable risk factors for MS, may more than triple the risk of disease progression.

Overall, the risk of developing secondary progressive MS was more than 3 times higher in smokers than in nonsmokers with RRMS. "This finding suggests that cigarette smoking may transform, or hasten the transformation of, relapsing-remitting forms of the disease into progressive forms," Hernán and colleagues said. The study also confirmed the results of previous investigations showing that smoking moderately increases the risk of developing MS.

While the presence of other lifestyle factors, such as diet and physical activity, could possibly have affected the outcome of this study, those factors were unlikely to have altered the strong association between smoking and the MS clinical course, the authors added.

SOURCE

Labels: multiple sclerosis, smoking