Smoking is a strong risk factor for rheumatoid nodules in early rheumatoid arthritis

Exaggerated circulating Th-1 cytokine response in early rheumatoid arthritis patients with nodules

“…Smoking was not 9 associated with RN in the present study, whereas others have reported a strong association (21). The small size of our cohort is one possible explanation.…”

“…Males have a higher risk of RN (1,21), however in the present study although more males than females had RN, this did not reach statistical significance. Smoking was not 9 associated with RN in the present study, whereas others have reported a strong association (21).…”

The presence of rheumatoid nodules at early rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis is a sign of extra-articular disease and predicts radiographic progression of joint destruction over 5 years

“…Surprisingly, we found no association with radiographic joint damage and smoking, neither current smoking nor ever smoking (Table 4), despite the fact RN-cases were more often ever smokers compared to the controls, 91% vs 68%. Smoking increases the risk for developing RN [47] and other severe extra-articular manifestation [48], but might not be directly involved in the joint destruction. In agreement with us neither Westhof et al [49] nor Finckh et al [33] found smoking to have an effect on joint damage.…”

Association of cigarette smoking with organ damage in primary systemic vasculitis

“…There are also some other studies demonstrating cigarette smoking as an important risk factor for the development of giant cell arteritis (GCA) (5,6). Studies on the effect of smoking in RA demonstrated a possible association between smoking and development of extraarticular manifestations (7) and rheumatoid nodules (8). In patients with SLE, cigarette smoking was associated with higher disease activity, higher prevalence of vasculitis and a tendency to increased damage score (9).…”