What damage does smoking do to the respiratory system?

Smoking can cause lung disease by damaging your airways and the small air sacs (alveoli) found in your lungs. Lung diseases caused by smoking include COPD, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Cigarette smoking causes most cases of lung cancer.

How does smoking affect epithelial tissue in the lungs and endothelial tissue in the blood vessels?

Cigarette smoke exposure also causes pulmonary endothelial cell apoptosis; this may initiate and promote development of the lung destruction characteristic of emphysema. Cigarette smoke exposure directly causes endothelial dysfunction associated with vascular remodeling and vasoconstriction in smokers.

Does nicotine cause endothelial dysfunction?

Nicotine, one of the major active compounds of cigarette smoke, has been shown to have adverse effects upon the CV system[5, 6], including autonomic imbalance, endothelial dysfunction and impaired coronary blood flow.

How does smoking affect the capillaries in the lungs?

Nicotine causes your blood vessels to constrict or narrow, which limits the amount of blood that flows to your organs. Over time, the constant constriction results in blood vessels that are stiff and less elastic. Constricted blood vessels decrease the amount of oxygen and nutrients your cells receive.

What happens to the lungs when you smoke?

Smoking destroys the tiny air sacs, or alveoli, in the lungs that allow oxygen exchange. When you smoke, you are damaging some of those air sacs. Alveoli don’t grow back, so when you destroy them, you have permanently destroyed part of your lungs. When enough alveoli are destroyed, the disease emphysema develops.

How does smoking affect the epithelial cells?

It is well established that exposure to cigarette smoke leads to airway epithelial mucus cell hyperplasia (3, 4), a loss of cilia (5–7), and reduced ciliary beating (8, 9). Ciliary beating can be stimulated by a variety of mechanisms, one of which involves cyclic nucleotides.

How does smoking affect endothelial cells?

In response to smoke exposure, endothelial cells are known to release inflammatory and proatherogenic cytokines. All these processes lead to endothelial dysfunction. Direct physical effects of smoke compounds and produced reactive oxygen species (ROS) lead to endothelial cell loss by apoptosis or necrosis.

How does nicotine damage endothelium?

What is endothelial dysfunction?

Endothelial dysfunction is a type of non-obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in which there are no heart artery blockages, but the large blood vessels on the heart’s surface constrict (narrow) instead of dilating (opening). This condition tends to affect more women than men and causes chronic chest pain.

What does smoking do to blood vessels?

Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause the cells that line blood vessels to become swollen and inflamed. This can narrow the blood vessels and can lead to many cardiovascular conditions. plaque that builds up in the walls of arteries.

How does cigarette smoking affect the respiratory epithelium?

1) Cigarette smoking effects on the respiratory epithelium. The epithelium coating the upper respiratory tract acts as a first line of defense against invasive agents (pollutants, allergens, microorganisms), and it can cause upper airway symptoms and diseases when in contact with these agents. 5.

How does smoking affect the health of the lungs?

Consider, for example, the lungs of a 60-year-old person with a 40-pack-year1smoking history starting at age 20 years. By age 60 years, this person will have inhaled the smoke from approximately 290,000 cigarettes and will bear a substantial risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.

Are there any respiratory diseases caused by smoking?

Other nonmalignant respiratory diseases that have been linked to smoking include asthma and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (USDHHS 2004), but the evidence has not reached a level of certainty sufficient to warrant a conclusion of cause and effect. Table 7.2 Definitions for principal nonmalignant respiratory diseases caused by cigarette smoking.

How does cigarette smoking affect the cilliary beat?

Agius et al.12 showed that cotinin, a toxic metabolite of nicotine is capable of significantly reducing the cilliary beat of epithelial cells in vitro. Cigarette smoking is also associated with profound changes in mucous production mechanisms.