12:16, 05 January 2010 | GMT +5
Quitting smoking increases risk of diabetes
BEIJING. January 5. KAZINFORM Smoking raises the risk of diabetes, but kicking the habit increases the risk even more, according to a study in Tuesday's the Annals of Internal Medicine; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

The study followed nearly 11,000 middle-aged people without diabetes -- 45 percent of whom were smokers -- over a nine-year period. Compared to those who had never smoked, the people who quit smoking during the study had a 73 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes three years after quitting.
By contrast, the smokers who continued to light up were only 31 percent more likely than non-smokers to have developed diabetes at the three-year mark.
The problem does not really lie in quitting smoking. It's the weight most people gain after giving up cigarettes, Pennsylvania researchers reported; Kazinform cites Xinhua.
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