Smoking, Genes, and Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Smoking, Genes, and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Higher Risk for Genetically Vulnerable Smokers, Swedish Study Shows

By Miranda HittiWebMD Medical News

Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson, MDon Thursday, October 07, 2004

Oct. 7, 2004 -- People whose genes make them more susceptible to developing rheumatoid arthritis are even more likely to get the disease if they smoke, say Swedish researchers.

In fact, certain genetically vulnerable smokers can be nearly 16 times more likely to develop the disease than nonsmokers without the same genetic profile.

The finding comes from scientists including Leonid Padyukov, MD, PhD, of Karolinksa Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.

Padyukov and colleagues studied more than 850 rheumatoid arthritis patients and 1,260 people without the joint disease, which affects twice as many women as men and is usually diagnosed between the ages of 30 and 50.

The researchers asked participants about their smoking habits and screened their blood for a gene-encoding protein sequence called the shared epitope (SE), which is the major genetic risk factor currently linked to rheumatoid arthritis.

Participants' blood samples were also tested for rheumatoid factor, a sign of the disease. All potential cases were diagnosed by a rheumatologist.

Only current cigarette smokers and those who had never smoked were included in the study. The smoking histories of former smokers vary too much to be informative, say the researchers, who also excluded a few people who only smoked cigars or pipes.

The findings show that genetics and smoking can team up to raise the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Compared with people who had never smoked and lacked SE genes, current smokers with SE genes were 7.5 times more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis.

Smokers with double SE genes were almost 16 times more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis, while smokers without SE genes were only 2.4 times more likely to be affected.

People who had never smoked but had SE genes were 2.8 times more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis.

Besides providing another reason to give up cigarettes, the results show that environmental factors, such as smoking, can influence disease risk associated with genetics, say the researchers.

The study appears in the October issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/95/103148.htm

Hugs, Jacy

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