Men who smoke the longest have the lowest risk of needing a total joint replacement, researchers found.Wait, what?
After accounting for potential confounders, those who had smoked for 48 years or more had a 42% to 51% lower risk of total knee or hip replacement than men who had never smoked, depending on age, according to George Mnatzaganian, a doctoral student at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and colleagues.Ah, well, that's probably because they cark it before their joints wear out, right? Eh? What do you mean 'no'?
Accounting for the competing risk of death, which was higher in the heavier smokers, did not change the association, the researchers reported online in Arthritis & Rheumatism.Nope, not good enough. Haven't you been keeping up? Nanny's instructions are perfectly clear on this matter: there is to be no positive effect even tenuously associated with smoking. And if there is, which there isn't, then it's certainly not to be spoken of in public. Policy based evidence, that's what we're looking for these days, understood?
Good. Now go back and do it again until you get the answer right. Your target is a finding that smoking smashes knees and shatters hips of both the smoker and everyone he's ever met or will meet, including those he's first introduced to years after he quits.