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 Researchers analyzed data on almost 5.9 million people in 88
previous studies examining the connection between smoking,
second-hand smoke exposure and diabetes. They estimated that roughly
28 million type 2 diabetes cases worldwide – or about 11.7 percent
of cases in men and 2.4 percent in women – could be attributed to
active smoking.
The more cigarettes smokers consumed, the more their odds of getting
diabetes increased.
If they quit, ex-smokers initially faced an even higher risk of
diabetes, but as more years pass without cigarette use their odds of
getting the disease gradually diminished, the analysis found.
“The diabetes risk remains high in the recent quitters,” said lead
study author An Pan, of Huazhong University of Science and
Technology in China. Weight gain linked to smoking cessation may be
at least partly to blame for the heightened diabetes risk in those
first months after giving up cigarettes, Pan added.
“However, the diabetes risk is reduced substantially after five
years,” Pan said by email. “The long-term benefits – including
benefits for other diseases like cancer and heart disease – clearly
outweigh the short-term higher risk.”
Worldwide, nearly one in 10 adults had diabetes in 2014, and the
disease will be the seventh leading cause of death by 2030,
according to the World Health Organization.
Most of these people have type 2 diabetes, which is associated with
obesity and aging and happens when the body can't properly use or
make enough of the hormone insulin to convert blood sugar into
energy. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to nerve damage,
amputations, blindness, heart disease and strokes.
Plenty of research has established a connection between smoking and
diabetes, although the reason is still unclear.
For the current analysis, Pan and colleges focused on exploring the
link between the amount and type of smoke exposure and diabetes
risk, as well as the potential for this risk to diminish with
smoking cessation.
Overall, the pooled data from all the studies showed the risk of
diabetes was 37 percent higher for smokers than non-smokers, the
study team reports in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.
Exactly how smoking might lead to diabetes isn’t firmly established,
but it’s possible smoking might cause inflammation, which in turn
boosts the risk for diabetes, Dr. Abbas Dehghan, of Erasmus
University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
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“The more one smokes, the more chronic inflammation there will be,
and the higher the risk of diabetes will be,” Dehghan, who wasn’t
involved in the study, said by email.
Occasional smokers were 21 percent more likely to have diabetes than
people who never picked up the habit, while the increased risk was
57 percent for heavy smokers.
People exposed to second-hand smoke were 22 percent more likely to
develop diabetes than people who never smoked, the study also found.
If smokers quit, their risk of diabetes over the next five years was
54 percent higher than for people who never smoked. After that, the
increased risk dropped to 18 percent over the following five-year
period. Remaining abstinent for a decade or more, however, reduced
the extra risk to 11 percent.
While the connection between smoking and diabetes is nowhere near as
strong as the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, the findings
still suggest that doctors should add diabetes to the list of risks
they warn smokers about, Amy Taylor of the University of Bristol in
the U.K. and colleagues note in an accompanying editorial.
The short-term increase in diabetes risk after quitting shouldn’t
deter smokers’ cessation efforts, they argue. Instead, smokers
should remember that cigarettes are tied to lower weight and
cessation can lead some people to eat or drink more, leading to
weight gain.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1LDUyHE and http://bit.ly/1PiE65c The Lancet
Diabetes and Endocrinology, online September 17, 2015.
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