TY - JOUR
T1 - Maternal nicotine exposure and fetal programming of vascular oxidative stress in adult offspring
AU - Lim, Rebecca
AU - Sobey, Christopher
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Despite the well-known harmful effects, many women continue to smoke throughout pregnancy. Consequently, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) - which has been developed as a pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation - has been used as an alternative to smoking during pregnancy. However, like cigarette smoking, NRT results in biologically significant levels of nicotine crossing the placenta, leading to both fetal and neonatal exposure to nicotine, and yet, NRT safety during pregnancy has not been extensively evaluated. There is now evidence from studies in rats that maternal nicotine exposure throughout gestation results in fetal programming of vascular oxidative stress in the offspring during adulthood. This phenomenon involves vascular dysfunction mediated by reactive oxygen species in association with decreased superoxide dismutase activity and increased Nox2-NADPH oxidase expression in the vascular wall. If this phenomenon also occurs in humans, either smoking or NRT use during pregnancy may represent a novel risk factor for the unborn that results in accelerated cardiovascular disease in their adulthood. LINKED ARTICLE This article is a commentary on Xiao et al., pp. 1400-1409 of this issue. To view this paper visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01437.x.
AB - Despite the well-known harmful effects, many women continue to smoke throughout pregnancy. Consequently, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) - which has been developed as a pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation - has been used as an alternative to smoking during pregnancy. However, like cigarette smoking, NRT results in biologically significant levels of nicotine crossing the placenta, leading to both fetal and neonatal exposure to nicotine, and yet, NRT safety during pregnancy has not been extensively evaluated. There is now evidence from studies in rats that maternal nicotine exposure throughout gestation results in fetal programming of vascular oxidative stress in the offspring during adulthood. This phenomenon involves vascular dysfunction mediated by reactive oxygen species in association with decreased superoxide dismutase activity and increased Nox2-NADPH oxidase expression in the vascular wall. If this phenomenon also occurs in humans, either smoking or NRT use during pregnancy may represent a novel risk factor for the unborn that results in accelerated cardiovascular disease in their adulthood. LINKED ARTICLE This article is a commentary on Xiao et al., pp. 1400-1409 of this issue. To view this paper visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01437.x.
UR - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=21585345
U2 - 10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01488.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01488.x
M3 - Letter
VL - 164
SP - 1397
EP - 1399
JO - British Journal of Pharmacology
JF - British Journal of Pharmacology
SN - 1476-5381
IS - 5
ER -