Progressive Increase in Platelet Activation With Smoke Exposure: Human Subject and In-Vitro Studies

Second hand cigarette smoke (SHS) is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and has been shown to substantiate platelet activation and aggregation in several studies [1, 2]. Most of these studies, under chronic or acute exposure conditions or over prolonged exposure, do not represent the initiation of a disease state or hematological damage under normal levels of cigarette smoke. These above studies of platelet activation with SHS together with our previous in-vitro studies demonstrating cardio-protective effects of nicotine [3], have motivated the present investigation of physiological levels of SHS exposure on human subjects and within an in-vitro endothelial cell-platelet system, with cigarettes (or smoke extracts) of varying nicotine content to confirm analogous cardio-protective effects of nicotine.