Smoking is associated with risk for developing inflammatory bowel disease including late onset ulcerative colitis: a prospective study.

Objectives: Life style factors have been associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) but there is a lack of data on the exposure of life styles factors before the onset of IBD. Our aim was to study the association between lifestyle factors and the development of IBD in a prospective setting.

Materials And Methods: We performed a case control study of 72 patients who later developed ulcerative colitis (UC), 26 patients who developed Crohn's disease (CD) and 427 healthy controls from the Västerbotten intervention project matched for gender, age, year of health survey and area of residence.