A new study presented at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology suggests that secondhand smoke exposure in both childhood and adulthood is linked with an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis in women.
But what is secondhand smoke? As per the Centres for Disease and Control, secondhand smoke is “the combination of smoke from the burning end of a cigarette and the smoke breathed out by smokers”.
The study included 79,806 women, around the age of 49, out of which 698 women developed rheumatoid arthritis diagnosed approximately 12 years after the study began in 1990. The association was primarily observed amongst never-smoking women. It was also found that about 13.5 percent of women reported exposure to cigarette smoke as children and 53.6 percent reported being exposed to smoking as adults. What was further observed is that an overall 58.9 percent had secondhand exposure in either adulthood or childhood and 8.25 percent had both.
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The result of the study highlighted that “smoking by-products, whether actively or passively inhaled, could generate autoimmunity, at least towards antigens involved in rheumatoid arthritis pathogenesis”.
The need of the hour is to avoid smoking for the betterment of not just one’s own health but also of those around them. If nothing else then passive smoking must definitely be avoided.