April 10, 2010 /
Source: Medscape
Emma Hitt, PhD
April 9, 2010 — Smoking appears to be associated with an increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in individuals with high anti–Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigens (EBNA) titers but not in those with low titer levels, according to a report in the April 7 online issue of Neurology.
Claire Simon, ScD, with Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues evaluated data from 3 case-control studies involving 442 MS cases and 865 controls. The 3 studies were a nested case-control study in the Nurses’ Health Study/Nurses’ Health Study II, a Tasmanian MS study, and a Swedish MS study.
“Few studies have considered the effects of MS risk factors simultaneously,” Dr. Simon told Medscape Neurology. “Our goal was to investigate whether the observed effects of smoking, anti-EBNA antibody titers, and HLA-DR15 were independent or related, indicating the possibility of shared biological mechanisms,” she said.
The current analysis used data from 3 case-control studies, a nested case-control study in the Nurses’ Health Study I and II, a Tasmanian MS study, and a Swedish MS study, including 442 subjects with MS and 865 without MS.
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