Smokers twice as likely to develop active TB: Study

HONG KONG: A study has found that smokers are twice as likely to develop active tuberculosis compared to people who have never smoked, prompting calls for policymakers to be tougher on smoking.

The study tracked nearly 18,000 people in Taiwan representing a general population for more than three years.

"We found a two-fold increase in the risk of active TB incurrent smokers compared with never-smokers (those who have never smoked)," wrote the lead author Hsien-Ho Lin, a postdoctoral research fellow from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.