Quitting smoking and losing weight may help in success of arthritis treatment, says study

A new study from McGill University in Montreal, Canada suggests that the likelihood of achieving sustained remission in earth rheumatoid arthritis is significantly lower in people who smoke and who are obese.

This new research, which was presented at recent European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2016), suggests that people would be advised to quit smoking and lose weight if they need to in order to maximise their chances of successful treatment.

For this study, researchers assessed the impact of patients’ body mass index scores and smoking habits on the time taken to achieve sustained remission in the first three years after diagnosis among people enrolled into the real-world Canadian Early Arthritis Cohort study.

Just over 1,000 patients were followed for three years, with disease activity, patient-reported outcomes and medication usage assessed at each visit. Just under half of the men taking part were overweight, while one-third were obese and one-fifth smoked. For the women in the study, just under one-third were overweight, one-third obese and 15% smoked.

The study showed that smoking and excess weight had significant independent and combined effects on the likelihood of achieving sustained remission in both men and women. For example, a non-smoking male with a healthy BMI would have a 41 per cent probability of achieving sustained remission within three years, compared to only 15 per cent for an obese male smoker.

These findings suggest that encouraging patients to stop smoking and to achieve a healthy body weight could be an important step towards helping these individuals to overcome the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.

Study investigator Dr Susan Bartlett from McGill University says, “Despite the high prevalence of excess body weight and smoking among rheumatoid arthritis patients, relatively little is known about whether and to what extent these modifiable lifestyle factors impact the likelihood of achieving sustained remission.

“Our findings show that not smoking and a healthy body weight – lifestyle factors which can be modified by patients – can have a significant impact on becoming symptom-free.”

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