Metabolome of Smokers Shows Early Signs of Damage

The blood "metabolomics" profile of smokers immediately after they had a cigarette revealed activation of pathways involved in cell death, inflammation, and other forms of systemic damage.

In a pilot study for evaluating the effect of cigarette smoking in humans, the global metabolomic profile was analyzed in the blood of individuals before and after smoking a cigarette. The metabolites were traced in the context of relevant pathways that are affected by cigarette smoke including cell death, cell-cell interactions (a marker of inflammation), lipid metabolism, and gene expression.

In heavy smokers, metabolites were traced that were being produced after smoking back to damage in multiple organs and to a breakdown in the phospholipids that make up a cell's membrane, and a change in production of bile acids.

The scientists who carried out the study said that the findings illustrate the best analysis for chemicals unequivocally produced by smoking and indicate the potential toll that carcinogens and toxins poise to smokers years before lung cancer, heart disease, or other smoking-related diseases appear.

The study was presented by investigators from the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, (Washington, DC, USA) part of Georgetown University Medical Center, at the Ninth AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Meeting in Philadelphia (PA, USA), which was held from November 7-10, 2010.

Senior author of the study, Peter Shields, M.D., who specializes in tobacco carcinogenesis, said that new blood tests might be developed that will enable scientists to assess the harmfulness of one tobacco product compared to another. This would be useful to the federal U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA; silver Spring, MD, USA), the agency charged by Congress to begin controlling the contents of cigarettes.

Previously, cigarette manufacturers were only required to use machines that "smoked" cigarettes to derive the chemical content of potential carcinogens.

Related Links:
Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
US Food and Drug Administration