Quitting smoking may reduce risk of rheumatoid arthritis
Smoking is an important risk factor for developing the most common form of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other inflammatory diseases, but a critical question remains: Can people who quit smoking delay or prevent RA, or have they permanently and irrevocably altered their risk of the disease? New research by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital examines that question using data from the Nurses’ Health studies, the first of which was started in 1976 at the Harvard School of Public Health and is now in its 42nd year. Their findings, which appear in the journal Arthritis Care & Research, demonstrate for the first time that changing behavior — in this case, sustained smoking cessation — can reduce the risk of developing seropositive RA, the more severe form of the disease. “Ours is the first study to show that a behavior change can reduce risk for seropositive RA,” said corresponding author Jeffrey Sparks, an...