WEDNESDAY, Feb. 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Consumption of Swedish smokeless tobacco (snus) is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a study published online Feb. 6 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
Sofia Carlsson, Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues used pooled data from five cohorts to examine the correlation between snus use and risk of type 2 diabetes. Data were included from five pooled cohorts for 54,531 never-smoking men and 2,441 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.
The researchers found the hazard ratio for type 2 diabetes to be 1.15 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.00 to 1.32) in current snus users compared with never users. The hazard ratios were 1.42 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.07 to 1.87) and 1.68 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.17 to 2.41), respectively, for individuals consuming five to six and seven or more boxes per week. The hazard ratio was 1.08 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.01 to 1.16) for each additional box of snus consumed per week.
"Our findings indicate that high consumption of snus is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. The risk was similar to that in smokers, implying that smokers will not reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by changing to snus use," the authors write. "The results also support the notion that nicotine increases the risk of type 2 diabetes."
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