Use of smokeless tobacco (or snuff) may increase the risk for heart failure, mainly of nonischemic origin and chiefly by increasing blood pressure and heart rate, a Swedish study found. When adjusted for age, the use of smokeless tobacco among a cohort of older men was associated with a more than twofold risk of developing heart failure compared with non-users (HR 2.42, ?% CI 1.37 to 4.27), according to Gabriel Arefalk, MD, of Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, and colleagues. When further adjusted for current smoking dose, pack-years of smoking, diabetes, body mass index, occupational classification, alcohol use, and myocardial infarction before baseline, the use of snuff resulted in a hazard ratio of 2.08 (95% CI 1.03 to 4.22), they reported online in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention Rehabilitation.
