States with high smoking rates report the highest rates of Crohn’s disease (CD) as well, according to research performed at the Price Institute of Surgical Research, in Louisville, Kentucky.

After a linear regression analysis of national data, researchers concluded that there is a correlation between regionally high rates of smoking and the number of hospital discharges. These findings, recently published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, proved the investigators’ thesis, which was established given the fact that CD patients who smoke have a 2.5-fold increased risk of surgical recurrence, compared to non-smokers, and twice the probability of disease relapse.

West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee are the states with the highest smoking rates, in which about a quarter of the populations smokes. Utah, California, New Jersey, Maryland and Arizona, on the other hand, registered the lowest rates.

As part of the research, scientists designed a population-based study and analyzed the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), which collects and stores patient discharge information from 30 U.S. states, in order to have access to the discharge data on CD, ulcerative colitis, (UC) and lung cancer.

To acquire the estimated smoking prevalence rates among adults resident in the same 30 states in study, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was analyzed. Despite the correlation verified with CD, there was no indication of a relation between smoking and hospital discharges for UC.

Many studies had already concluded that CD patients are more likely to smoke than the general population. However, none of the studies establish if CD prevalence was related to regional smoking rates. Following this discovery, researchers reminded to clinicians to counsel and reiterate the importance of not smoking to CD patients.