Smoking, use of moist snuff and risk of celiac disease: a prospective study

BACKGROUND: Smoking status has been linked to several chronic inflammatory conditions but earlier research on smoking and celiac disease (CD) is contradictive. There are little data on moist snuff use and CD. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between smoking, moist snuff use and later CD. METHODS: We identified individuals with biopsy-verified CD (villous atrophy, histopathology stage Marsh III) through biopsy-reports from Sweden’s 28 pathology departments. Data on smoking and moist snuff were collected from the Swedish construction worker database “Bygghälsan” that includes preventive health care check-up data. Through poisson regression we calculated relative risks (RRs) for later CD according to smoking status (n = 305,722), and moist snuff status (n = 199,200) adjusting for age, sex and decade. RESULTS: During follow-up 488 individuals with smoking data, and 310 with moist snuff data had a diagnosis of CD. The risk of CD was independent of smoking status with all RRs being statistically insignificant and ranging between 0.9 and 1.0. Compared to non-smokers, neither current smokers (RR = 0.93; 95% CI = 0.76-1.14) nor ex-smokers (RR = 0.98; 95% CI = 0.75-1.28) were at increased or decreased risk of CD. Risk estimates were similar in moderate smokers (RR = 0.92; 0.72-1.16) and heavy smokers (RR = 0.95; 0.74-1.24), and did not change when we examined the risk more than ten years after health examination (RR-moderate: 0.90; and RR-heavy: 0.95; both p > 0.05). Moist snuff use was not associated with later CD (RR = 1.00; 0.78-1.28), or with CD after more than ten years of follow-up (RR = 1.05; 0.80-1.38). CONCLUSIONS: We found no association between smoking, moist snuff use and future CD.