Smoking and Hodgkin’s lymphoma

Smoking appears to increase the risk of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a prospective study has shown. Information on baseline and lifetime smoking among 478,590 participants in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition was collected between 1992 and 2000. In all, the researchers noted 1,304 cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 67 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The relative risk for smokers at baseline was more than doubled for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but was not elevated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or individual B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma subtypes.

Nieters A, Rohrmann S, Becker N et al. Am J Epidemiol 2008; 167: 1081-9

Originally published in the June 2008 edition of MIMS Oncology & Palliative Care.