Metabolomics of blood smokers immediately after taking a cigarette dose revealed the immediate activation of pathways that play a role in cell death, inflammation and other forms of systemic damage.
Scientists of Georgetown Comprehensive Cancer Center. Lombardi (part of the medical center of Georgetown University, USA) argue that they conducted the most accurate at the moment examination of chemicals uniquely associated with smoking and that they obtained undeniable data on carcinogens and toxins that poison smokers and lead to lung cancer, heart disease And other ailments. "We have found signs of damage to the liver, heart and kidneys in healthy people," the author of the study, Ping-Chin-Soo.
His supervisor, Peter Shields, an expert on tobacco carcinogenesis, notes that this work paves the way for the development of new blood tests that will help assess the true harmfulness of tobacco products and ultimately to develop legislation that controls the composition of cigarettes. Until now, manufacturers had only to test their products on special "smoking" machines for an approximate assessment of the content of carcinogens. Finally, a method for obtaining a real picture of what is happening in the body of a smoker.
In the course of the experiment, the blood of ten people was analyzed before and after the smoked cigarette, and also after the second cigarette smoked an hour later. Since the body of smokers with different experiences differently assimilates toxins, five light smokers (less than 12 cigarettes a day) and five avid (23 or more cigarettes per day) participated in the testing,.
Then the researchers conducted a metabolomics of about three thousand chemicals in the blood of each smoker. When something (food, tobacco smoke, alcohol, drugs) enters the body, it is metabolized, that is, it breaks down into components (metabolites) that perform a certain biological function through metabolic pathways. A system of metabolic reactions is called a global metabolic syndrome, and metabolomics is a metabolic analysis at a given time.
Using a set of complex tools, researchers were able to track metabolites in the context of appropriate pathways that suffer from tobacco smoke (lipid metabolism, gene expression, etc..
), And then follow the metabolites that formed after smoking and harmed many organs, as well as producing gaps in the phospholipids constituting cell membranes and leading to changes in the release of bile acids.
The study continues. Scientists plan to compare the changes in the metabolic metabolism of smokers with changes in the transcriptome - we mean the aggregate of all RNA molecules produced at the moment in cells. The ultimate goal of the work is to identify new markers of the risk of oncological diseases associated with smoking.
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