Doctors have long warned that some 190,000 Americans die annually from smoking-related heart disease. Chemicals in the cigarette smoke reduce oxygen-carrying ability of blood, force the heart to pump harder and cause blood dots.
But the new research indicates there’s yet another way tobacco strikes the heart: Through diabetic-like glucose reactions that occur even in young smokers, said study author Anthony Cerami of Long Island’s Picower Institute for Medical Research.
“The results are preliminary but exciting,” said Dr Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Centre who is familiar with Cerami’s work: “Heart attacks combine two distinct processes, hardening of the arteries and blood clots. We know cigarette smoking is an important trigger by activating dotting Now it appears that cigarette smoke has a direct impact on both sides of the equation.”
Cerami, who presented the data to scientists meeting at the weekend, says he “stumbled on to” the finding while studying how high levels of the blood sugar glucose harden diabetics’ arteries.
Glucose undergoes chemical reactions to form compounds called advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs, that bind to certain proteins in the blood. They in turn form clogs of cholesterol and other substances than stick to artery walls.
Everybody’s body has glucose and everybody’s arteries naturally begin hardening, in some people as early as their teens. But high glucose levels accelerate this atherosclerosis, giving diabetics a higher risk of heart disease, Cerami explained.
Cerami was studying how diabetics and non-diabetics react differently to glucose when he noticed the vast majority of non- diabetics who had AGE damage were smokers. So he set out to discover why.
AGE levels in the blood of 23 non-diabetic smokers who did not yet have heart disease were significantly higher than levels in similar non-smokers, Cerami found.
The smokers’ average level of 202 units per millilitre of blood is comparable to the AGE levels of some diabetics, said Momtaz Wassef, the National Institutes of Health’s chief of atherosclerosis research.
Then Cerami looked at the vital carotid arteries of smokers diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and found extensive blockage from AGEs.
That still was indirect evidence, so Cerami exposed healthy rats to cigarette smoke for 22 months. The rats had 75 per cent more AGEs in their blood than rats who never inhaled cigarette smoke.
The Heavenly Melodious Teaching