Prenatal Smoking to Result In Impaired Lung Development in Offspring, Study Suggests

Feb, 2021 - By SMI

According to a new study led by a group of researchers have suggested that children are at higher risks to suffer from impaired lung development, if their mothers smoked during pregnancy (prenatal smoking). Moreover, the researchers also suggested that these group of children are highly vulnerable towards developing lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The research was conducted on mice model.

Furthermore, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention around 5.5 million children and 19.2 million adults are estimated to have asthma in the U.S. and around 16 million adults in the U.S are suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD. Researchers also noted that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma results in difficult breathing and are incurable.

In addition, researchers also informed that a protein amphiregulin that enables tissue homeostasis can further be utilized to hinder impaired lung development in children of mothers, who smoked during pregnancy. Research evidence also proposes that increased amphiregulin/epidermal growth factor receptor signaling might have to play a role in lung impairment in infants, who are exposed to prenatal smoking. Additionally, researchers also observed that prenatal smoke exposure resulted in scarcer ciliated cells, which plays a vital role in protecting and clear the respiratory airways during bronchiolar development. The study was piloted in 50 one-day-old mice, and the duration of the experiment was five weeks, which also included one week of adaptation to smoke exposure.