Osteoarthritis Worsened by Smoking!

Another guilt-trip for smokers . . . If you continue to smoke you may well aggravate any osteoarthritis of the knee you already have. This finding from the Mayo Clinic was reported in the Annals of the Rheumatic Association.

The researchers studied 159 men with knee osteoarthritis, using MRI at the start of the study, and then 15 and 30 months later. Loss of cartilage (a normal event in osteoarthritis) was followed using the MRI exams. Nineteen of the men were smokers at the start of the study. They had 2.3 to 2.5 times the loss of cartilage at two points in the joint as the men who were non-smokers. The smokers also had higher pain scores than the non-smokers at the start of the study and at the end 30 months later.

This study was done in men, as there were too few women in the group who smoked – a mere 4%. This is not representative of the general population, though, and there’s no reason to believe the same results wouldn’t have been obtained in women. So here’s another risk factor for osteoarthritis, and another reason to stop smoking.