Researchers in Denmark have linked smoking to an increased risk of developing pancreatitis, a condition where abdominal pain is caused by inflammation of the pancreas, and now believe that cigarettes may be linked to nearly half of all cases of the condition. Scientists had been aware for some time that smoking caused pancreatic damage but previously had no knowledge of whether smoking independently was a risk factor for pancreatitis.
The scientists analysed data from 20 years’ worth of statistics on 17,905 people to determine whether the two were indeed associated. They used physician’s examinations and self-administered questionnaires to reach their conclusions. 58% of the women and 68% of the men were current smokers, 15% and 19% of the women respectively had smoked before and the remainder had never smoked. By the end of the study 160 cases of acute and 97 cases of chronic pancreatitis had been reported. The study concluded that 46% of these cases were attributable to smoking, showing that smoking was an independent risk factor.
Janne Schurmann Tolstrup, from the Danish National Institute for Public Health and co-author of the study, and her colleagues said that “a biological effect of smoking seems plausible, because both animal studies and human studies have demonstrated changes of the pancreas and in pancreatic functioning after exposure to tobacco smoke”. The findings are published in the March edition of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.