Chronic cigarette smoking linked to cardiovascular disease

The Food and Drug Administration on Nov 10 announced a better tobacco control proposal to enhance health warnings about cigarette smoking to seek public comments on nine new large and more noticeable textual warning statements and colorful graphic images linked to health consequences of cigarette smoking.

The warnings are intended to tell the public a message that cigarettes are addictive, smoking can harm children, cigarette smoke leads to fatal lung disease, cancer, strokes and heart disease, and smoking during pregnancy can harm babies, tobacco smoking boosts death risk, secondhand smoke can cause fatal lung diseases in nonsmokers and quitting smoking now can reduce serious health consequences.

Cigarette smoking kills 430,000 people in the United States each year.  Health hazards of tobacco smoke are well known.

A new study published in the Nov 5, 2010 issue of American Journal of Physiology - Heart and Circulatory Physiology confirmed that long-term cigarette smoking may increase risk of a series of cardiovascular risk parameters.

The study led by M.A. Hassan Talukder and colleagues from The Ohio State University and other institutions demonstrated that cigarette smoking led to blunted weight gain, hypertension, endothelial dysfunction, leukocyte activation with reactive oxygen species generation, decreased nitric oxide bioavailability, and mild cardiac hypertrophy - in mice.

Cigarette smoking is a known major independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and the association between chronic exposure to tobacco smoke and cardiovascular disease has been well established.

The current study using a mouse model was meant to examine the underlying mechanism behind the link between cigarette smoking and cardiovascular disease.

For the study, male mice were exposed to whole body mainstream cigarette smoke for 48 minutes a day and five days a week for 16 or 32 weeks.

With 32 weeks of exposure to cigarette smoke, mice gained significantly less body weight and  had higher blood pressure. Study mice also showed deteriorated acetylcholine-inducedd vasorelaxation and enlarged left ventricular mass, impaired in vitro cardiac function, higher levels of reactive oxygen species in white blood cells, and faster decaying of blood nitric oxide.

Early studies have linked cigarette smoking or tobacco smoke to emphysema, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, colorectal cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction in men, stomach cancer, bladder and kidney cancer, abdominal aortic aneurysm, acute myeloid leukemia, cataracts, cervical cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, periodontitis and pneumonia.

By David Liu