Overview

• An analysis of more than 7,000 participants from Nordic cohorts, presented at the EASD meeting in Vienna, found elevated odds of every major type 2 diabetes subtype among people who had ever smoked, with results still pending peer review.
• Compared with never-smokers, ever-smokers had over twice the risk of severe insulin‑resistant diabetes (SIRD) and higher risks for severe insulin‑deficient (SIDD, +20%), mild obesity‑related (MOD, +29%), and mild age‑related (MARD, +27%) diabetes.
• Heavy smoking—about 20 cigarettes a day for 15 years—raised risks further, to roughly 2.35 times for SIRD and by 52% for SIDD, 57% for MOD, and 45% for MARD, with researchers estimating smoking accounts for more than one‑third of SIRD cases.
• People with a high genetic risk for impaired insulin secretion were more than three times as likely to develop SIRD if they smoked, indicating a potent gene–environment interaction.
• In Swedish data, use of snus (a smokeless tobacco) was linked to higher diabetes risk, and public‑health guidance cited in the coverage notes quitting smoking can cut type 2 diabetes risk by about 30%–40% and improve insulin effectiveness within weeks.