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A study carried out in Italy has revealed that smoking increases the risk of getting colorectal cancer by about 18%, as well as of dying from the disease by about 25%.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study team had looked at data from 106 previous observational studies, which ranged in size from a few hundred study subjects to more than a million. Its findings are significant because the link between smoking and colorectal cancer has not always been conclusive.

“Smoking is significantly associated with colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. People should be aware that smoking increases the risk of cancer not only in organs where there is direct contact with tobacco-related carcinogens, such as lung, oropharynx, larynx and upper digestive tract, but also in organs where exposure to tobacco degradation products is indirect, such as the pancreas, kidney, bladder, cervix, colon and rectum,” said Edoardo Botteri, a biostatistician in the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, the leader of the study.

And risk escalates the more one smokes.

“There was an increase in risk with increasing number of cigarettes per day and pack-years — the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day multiplied by years of consumption,” added Botteri.

Increased risk was observed after about a decade of smoking, while statistical significance was reached after about 3 decades of smoking. But, according to Botteri, “that doesn’t mean that there is no increased risk for people who smoked less than 30 years. It just means that there is strong evidence that exposure of 30 years or more increases the risk of colorectal cancer”.

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