Cigarette Smoking and Ulcerative Colitis

HARRIES et al. recently reported that cigarette smokers were less likely to have ulcerative colitis than nonsmokers.1 Bureš et al. have observed a similar association.2 Harries' paper was followed by an extraordinary case report by de Castella, on a young woman in whom ulcerative colitis developed after she had stopped smoking cigarettes.3 On numerous subsequent occasions, signs and symptoms of the disease disappered when the woman started smoking and reappeared when she stopped. Roberts and Diggle reported a similar case in a woman with ulcerative colitis, who was asymptomatic while smoking and whose symptoms returned within 48 to 72 hours . . .