Cigarette smoking and platelet adhesion

Abstract

Non-abraded rabbit endothelium has been exposed to human blood taken from male non-smoking volunteers before and after the smoking of two medium tar cigarettes, in an in vitro system using a Baumgartner chamber. In each case the blood was allowed to circulate for 10 min at a constant flow rate. Blood from 10 volunteers has been tested in this way. Scanning electron microscopy of the endothelial surfaces demonstrates large numbers of adherent platelets when 'post-smoking blood' is used, but very few and in some cases none with the 'pre-smoking' blood. As a further control to ensure that this phenomenon did not occur as a result from changes in the vessel related to the time during which it had been removed from its normal physiological environment, blood from further non-smoking volunteers was passed over seven of the remaining pieces of vessel at the completion of these runs. Platelets were either absent or very few in number, as with the pre-smoking samples.