Quit Smoking To Save Your Joints

You've heard it before: smoking is bad for you. And it's not just your lungs that are harmed from you cigarette habit. Your joints can be affected too.

Smokers may have a higher risk of psoriatic arthritis. The risk is even higher for women who smoke more than others.

Quit smoking today!

Psoriasis is a skin condition that generally causes skin redness and irritation. Some psoriasis patients go on to develop a form of arthritis called psoriatic arthritis.

Past studies have shown a link between smoking and psoriasis, but researchers are still unsure if smoking is linked to psoriatic arthritis.

In a recent study, Abrar A. Qureshi, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues wanted to see if smoking was associated with a risk of psoriatic arthritis in women.

Compared to people who have never smoked, past smokers had a 54 percent higher risk of psoriatic arthritis. Current smokers were more than three times as likely as non-smokers to develop psoriatic arthritis.

As the authors write, "In this study, smoking was found to be associated with a risk of [psoriatic arthritis] and cumulative measures of smoking were also associated with a higher risk of [psoriatic arthritis] among women."

In other words, the more you smoke, the greater your risk of psoriatic arthritis.

These findings add to the many reasons why people should quit smoking.

The study included nearly 95,000 women from the Nurses' Health Study II.

The results are published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.