There seems to be a strong cause / effect relationship with tobacco alcohol use among RA sufferers. All the RA patients I know are former smokers...was your Mom a drinker / smoker?? Seems to be an environmental trigger for RA among many RA patients..
Is there a useful point to that?
It's impossible to know they precise trigger and it isn't helpful for people living with RA today. My Mom got RA
many years after quitting smoking. There is no point dwelling on her past smoking.
Nearly all of the people with juvenile RA, were never smokers. In my Mothers generation, nearly half the population smoked, but only a very tiny percentage got RA.
I have been researching this, as long as my Mom has had it (~25 years) . Yes there is a higher rate of RA for smokers (and many other factors). Alcohol may actually lower risk. It's not that smoking causes RA, it's just one of many possible triggers when you have the wrong combination of genes. It's also very difficult knowing if correlations are causative in population studies with so many confounding factors. For instance having a university degree lowers your risk by 40%.
Here is a list of some risk factors analysed:
Recent studies have increased our understanding of environmental exposures that modify risk for RA such as smoking and alcohol intake. Other factors such as birthweight, breastfeeding, socioeconomic status and region of birth have also been demonstrated ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Basically it's seem like an array of stressors can increase your odds of RA, if you have the wrong gene combo, which is likely the most important risk factor.
Determining actual triggers for individuals, seems basically impossible, and has nothing to do with treating the disease once triggered.