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Exposing mice to cigarette smoke results in colitis, an inflammation of the colon resembling Crohn’s disease, and identify a specific white blood cell and inflammatory protein responsible for this effect. Previous research shows that smoking significantly increases the risk of Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease. However the mechanism by which cigarette smoke affects the gastrointestinal system was not known.
One possibility is that inflammation in the lungs caused by smoking could have a knock-on effect in the intestine.
a connection between the lung and the large intestine has long been emphasized. Crohn’s disease may occur in people with airway diseases, suggesting that inflammation in the lungs is linked with inflammation in the gut.
Researchers exposed mice to smoke from twenty cigarettes a day, six days a week, for a few weeks. The researchers then examined the presence of inflammation in the mice’s lungs and colons. Mice exposed to cigarette smoke showed significant inflammation in their lungs. Interestingly, they also suffered from a type of colitis resembling Crohn’s disease.
The researchers found increased levels of mucus and inflammation in the colon, and blood in the feces of the smoke-exposed mice. They also found increased levels of CD4+ T cells, a type of white blood cell, which were releasing a pro- inflammatory protein called interferon-gamma. Cigarette smoking activates specific white blood cells in the lung, which might move to the colon, triggering bowel inflammation.
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