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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – An American study showed that people who stopped smoking decades ago were less likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than those who had fallen behind in their decision to end the bad habit.
Science has long associated smoking with an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis and concludes that stopping smoking reduces risk. But the new study showed that quitting for years could have better benefits than just taking a short break.
"These results prove that people at high risk for rheumatoid arthritis can quit smoking as this could delay or even prevent the disease," said Jeffrey Sparks, senior author of the Brigham & Brigham Hospital Study. Womans of the Harvard School of Medicine in Boston.
Sparks said in an e-mail that quitting was of course the best way to reduce the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, but its reduction "also helps to ward off danger".
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Rheumatoid arthritis is an immune disorder that causes swelling and pain in the joints and is less common than osteoporosis.
Sparks and her colleagues studied more than 38 years of data for more than 230,000 women, including 1,528 women with rheumatoid arthritis.
"Smokers were 47% more likely to be infected than ever smoked," the researchers wrote in the journal Arthritis Research and Treatment.
Caleb Micho, a researcher at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha who did not participate in the study, said the findings gave another reminder to smokers.
"It is unlikely that quitting will reduce the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which remains a difficult condition to treat and is a chronic source of pain and suffering for many people, but smokers can reduce this risk by reducing at least the number of cigarettes, "he said.
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