Health
Smoking may increase risk of diabetes
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Oct. 10, 2005
If one more reason to quit or never start smoking is needed, here's a good one. Researchers have found that smoking could increase the risk of developing diabetes.
The link was found when researchers examined the relationship between smoking and diabetes among participants in the large Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study conducted in 1996. They compared the incidence of diabetes after five years among smokers and those who had never smoked.
Twenty-five percent of the participants who smoked and did not have diabetes when the study began had developed diabetes by the five-year follow-up, compared with 14% of the participants who had never smoked, said Capri G. Foy, PhD, and colleagues at the IRAS coordinating center at North Carolina's Wake Forest University School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The insulin resistance study was conducted at the school.The researchers found that when their analyses were adjusted to account for other diabetes risk factors, "smokers still exhibited significantly increased incidence of diabetes compared to people who had never smoked," Dr. Foy said.
The findings were reported in the Oct. 1 Diabetes Care.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/10/10/hlbf1010.htm.
