Washington, Oct 28: Smokers are up to three times as likely to develop Multiple Sclerosis than nonsmokers, researchers said. Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway and Harvard University in Massachusetts surveyed 22,000 people aged 40 to 47 from 1997 to 1999 and found the risk of developing multiple Sclerosis nearly three times higher for men who smoked and about two times higher for women smokers than for their nonsmoking counterparts.
''Cigarette smoke is a cocktail of chemicals that are potentially Neurotoxins,'' said Alberto Ascherio, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, who worked on the study.
However, when asked specifically how smoking triggers the disease, Ascherio responded, ''honestly we don't know. That is why this data is important.'' he said more research is needed. The researchers found that most of the 87 people in the study who had Multiple Sclerosis started smoking 15 years before they developed the incurable disease. Of the Multiple Sclerosis patients,nearly 24 percent had never smoked and about 76 percent were current or past smokers. ''In order to be classified as smokers, they had to smoke at least one cigarette a day, and the number of years of smoking, in the total study population, ranged from one to 38,'' Trond Riise, who led the Bergen arm of the study, said in an interview conducted by e-mail. It was not clear why male smokers had a higher rate of Multiple Sclerosis than women, Ascherio said. The study will be published in the today's issue of Neurology, the Scientific Journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Bureau Report