Smoking Heightens Risk for Colorectal Adenomas

Cigarette smoking is associated with risk for colorectal adenomas and advanced adenomas. Now, researchers have performed a meta-analysis of studies that focused on current and past smokers and have compared risk for adenomas in each group. The meta-analysis involved 42 independent studies from the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia and included a total of 15,352 cases and 100,011 controls.

Compared with people who never smoked, current smokers had a pooled risk for colorectal adenomas of 2.1 and people who had ever smoked had a pooled risk of 1.8. Smoking was associated more strongly with development of high-risk adenomas than it was with development of low-risk adenomas.