Ulcerative colitis doubles risk of developing when smoking before the age of 20
Feb 18, 2025
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Inflammatory bowel disease is an intractable disease that causes chronic inflammation of the intestine and continuously suffers from diarrhea, bloody excrement, fatigue, and weight loss, and ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are typical. Recently, due to westernized eating habits, the incidence rate is rapidly increasing, especially among the younger age group.
Among them, ulcerative colitis is a disease that causes inflammation of the colon mucosa, and the prognosis is better than Crohn's disease that occurs anywhere in the digestive tract, but it is reported to account for more than 60% of all inflammatory bowel diseases due to its high incidence.
Until now, smoking has been known to act oppositely against the two diseases belonging to these inflammatory bowel diseases. In the case of Crohn's disease, the risk of developing it is clearly high for smokers, but the incidence of ulcerative colitis increases when smoking is stopped, and smoking has a beneficial effect. In general, smoking is a factor that increases the inflammatory response in the body, so these results remained a question of the academic world.
In order to clarify the relationship between smoking and inflammatory bowel disease, the research team conducted a long-term study that analyzed data from more than 6.5 million people nationwide based on domestic health examination examination data from 2009 to 2012.
Studies have shown that smoking age may affect the development of ulcerative colitis. People who started smoking before the age of 20 had about twice as high an incidence of ulcerative colitis as non-smokers, and the risk of developing ulcerative colitis increased with younger age who started smoking, such as 1.73 times at the age of 20-24 and 1.68 times at the age of 25-29. On the other hand, in the case of Crohn's disease, there was no significant difference according to the starting age of smoking.
This study is the first to reveal that adolescent smoking can be a risk factor for ulcerative colitis in the long term, and is expected to be an important basis for preventing smoking and establishing smoking cessation policies in the future.
Professor Jeon Yoo-kyung said, "Inflammatory bowel disease is an intractable disease with a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and eating habits are important, but smoking is also important." As it has been found that the lower the smoking age, the higher the risk of developing ulcerative colitis, it is necessary to promote smoking prevention in adolescence and introduce an early screening system for high-risk groups for inflammatory bowel disease." he said.
Meanwhile, the results of the study were published in the international journal 'Yonsei Medical Journal'.
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This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
