Meta-Analysis: Smoking Linked to Increased Fracture Risk for Men

TUESDAY, June 14, 2022 (HealthDay News) — For men, smoking is associated with increased fracture risk, according to a meta-analysis published online June 3 in Scientific Reports.

Yingke Xu, M.P.H., from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and colleagues examined the association between smoking and fracture risk in men in a meta-analysis of data from 27 studies that met the inclusion criteria.

The researchers found that smoking was associated with a significantly increased risk of fracture in the frequentist approach and the Bayesian approach (relative risks, 1.37 and 1.36, respectively). There was significant heterogeneity noted in the meta-analysis (Higgin’s I, 83 percent). In prespecified sensitivity and subgroup analyses, a significant association was also observed. Results were similar in the groups containing a large sample size (≥10,000 participants) and a small sample size (<10,000 participants); the pooled relative risks were 1.23 and 1.56, respectively. With the Bayesian method, the effect sizes were 1.23 and 1.57 for the large and small sample size groups, respectively.

“Our results have crucial implications in public health, with the most apparent being that quitting smoking can reduce an individual’s risk of bone fracture, both now and later in life,” the authors write.