TUESDAY, Dec. 16 (HealthDay News) -- There is a strong association between cigarette smoking and incidence of colorectal cancer, as well as disease-specific mortality, according to research published in the Dec. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Edoardo Botteri, of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 106 studies on smoking and the risk of colorectal cancer, including 26 studies that compared adjusted risk for ever smokers versus never smokers.
Ever smokers had a higher risk of colorectal cancer than never smokers (relative risk, 1.18), the investigators found. There was also evidence of a dose-dependent relationship according to the daily number of cigarettes smoked and number of pack-years, but only to a significant extent after 30 years of smoking, the data revealed. Mortality was higher among smokers compared with never smokers (RR, 1.25), the researchers report.
"Smoking has not been considered so far in the stratification of individuals for colorectal cancer screening," the authors conclude. "Our previous and present findings provide strong evidence of the detrimental effect of cigarette smoking on the development of adenomatous polyps and colorectal cancer. We believe that smoking represents an important factor to consider when deciding on the age at which colorectal cancer screening should begin, either by lowering the age in smokers or increasing the age in non-smokers."
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