Cigarette smoking is widespread and deadly, yet our understanding of how cigarette smoke actually causes serious respiratory illnesses is incomplete, which has severely hampered the development of effective treatments. Today, Australian researchers reveal how multiple chemicals found in cigarette smoke and e-cigarettes alter the function of a key type of immune cell found in the lungs.
The study, published January 17 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), suggests that these alterations make cigarette smokers, and those exposed to second- and third-hand smoke, more susceptible to respiratory infections, and worsen smoking-related inflammatory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Cigarette smoking is known to impair the immune system’s response to infections and promote inflammation in the lungs that can lead to or exacerbate COPD, the third leading cause of death worldwide. COPD patients are more susceptible to influenza infections that can, in turn, worsen the underlying disease by increasing airway inflammation and promoting the destruction of the lung’s air sacs. There are currently no effective treatments for COPD.
According to Dr. Wael Awad, from Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute, and first author on the new JEM study, “until now the mechanisms underlying the skewed immune responses in people exposed to cigarette smoke, and how they are related to smoke-associated diseases like COPD, remain unclear.”
Professor Jamie Rossjohn of Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute co-led the study with Professor David P. Fairlie of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at University of Queensland, Professor Alexandra J. Corbett of the University