Smoking cigarettes can delay recovery from MS relapse by two months

Smoking cigarettes slows relapse recovery by as much as two months in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study. Numerous previous studies have found evidence that smoking cigarettes causes faster disability progression and worse outcomes in MS.

Disability levels were measured with the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS). Overall, smokers had statistically significant higher EDSS scores than nonsmokers immediately after a relapse and at two months later. This means that people who smoked reached higher levels of disability during a relapse and had a poorer two-month recovery than non-smokers.

This study aimed to compare cigarette smoking with other types of tobacco use. Researchers divided participants into non-smokers, waterpipe smokers, cigarette smokers, and passive smokers.

EDSS scores of the cigarette smokers were significantly higher than non-smokers immediately after a relapse, and two months later. There wasn’t, however, a statistically significant difference seen with the passive smokers and waterpipe smokers when compared with non-smokers.

Heavier cigarette smokers also tended to experience more disability during a relapse, although once researchers accounted for age, sex and disease duration, the association was no longer significant which means it could have been due to chance.

A statistically significant association also was detected between EDSS scores at two months post-relapse and the number of minutes given to water pipe smoking each month and minutes each year of passive exposure to tobacco smoke.

These results “show that tobacco smoking especially cigarette smoking is associated with higher functional disabilities during a relapse and recovery phase of attack in patients with RRMS”, researchers said.