Another reason not to smoke

Filed in archive Miscellany on September 27, 2005

The daily do not smoke message. There may be an association with diabetes:

Smoking may increase the risk of developing diabetes, according to new research by investigators at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

The surprising finding emerged when researchers examined the relationship between smoking and diabetes among participants in a major national study, the Insulin Resistance atherosclerosis Study (IRAS). 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 to 14 percent of the participants who had never smoked, according to Capri G. Foy, Ph.D., and her colleagues at the national IRAS coordinating center at the School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.