Researchers at Brigham and Women's Boston Hospital, in the United States, ensure that tobacco favors the appearance of type 2 diabetes, both for smokers and for those around them, according to the results of an investigation published by the magazine 'Diabetes Care'.

In addition, after a follow -up to more than 100,000 women for 24 years, they have observed that the higher exposure to smoking, even if it is passively, the more risk there is of suffering from this disease.As John explained, one of the study authors.

The study began in 1982, the year in which the participants completed a questionnaire to reflect their degree of exposure to tobacco smoke.During the next 24 years, about one in 18 women were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

They form and their team observed that women who smoked more than two tobacco packages a day were most likely to develop diabetes.

However, the risks were really older for exfusters and women affected by passive smoking, since in both groups around 39 out of 10,000 participants developed diabetes every year.

When variables such as weight, age and family history of diabetes were taken into account, exfusters had 12 percent more risk of diabetes than those that were regularly exposed to passive smoking.

The potential risks of developing diabetes for being exposed to smoking passively were unknown, added David Nathan, who runs the Diabetes Center of the Massachusetts General Hospital and is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Therefore, and although they have not yet detected the origin of this relationship, the results of the study make more necessary the need to avoid passive smoking.

In addition, although the study has been conducted in women, its authors are convinced that the link between passive smoking and diabetes can be similar in men.