Control of breathing in infants born to smoking mothers☆,☆☆,★,★★
Section snippets
Subjects
Sixty-four healthy term infants, aged 2 to 24 months (mean age, 11.6 ± 6.5 months) were studied. Subjects were recruited for the study through an advertisement in local child health centers in Perth, Western Australia. The hospital ethics committee approved the study, and parents gave written consent. Thirty-five sets of parents in this study were lifetime non-smokers. In 10 families only the father smoked and in 6 only the mother smoked. In the remaining 13 families both parents smoked.
RESULTS
Infants were divided into 2 groups, the smoking group and the non-smoking group, by the maternal smoking history assessed by a questionnaire. Nineteen mothers smoked during their pregnancy, with 10 mothers smoking less than 10 cigarettes per day and 9 mothers smoking more than 10 per day. All mothers who had smoked during the pregnancy continued smoking after the delivery. All mothers who smoked did so inside the house. In the 10 families in which only the father smoked, 4 fathers reported
DISCUSSION
The results of this study show that infants born to smoking mothers have a lower respiratory drive, as assessed by P0.1 . While breathing quietly in room air, these infants achieved normal ventilation but with an altered shape to the expiratory limb of their tidal flow-volume curve. However, unlike infants born to non-smoking mothers, when they were exposed to the hypoxic gas mixture, they had significantly blunted ventilatory responses.
We studied infants while sedated with chloral hydrate, as
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Cited by (101)
Infant sleep: control of breathing and common sleep problems
2023, Encyclopedia of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms: Volume 1-6, Second EditionCigarette smoke exposure effects on the brainstem expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), and on cardiac, respiratory and sleep physiologies
2019, Respiratory Physiology and NeurobiologyPrenatal cigarette smoke exposure effects on apoptotic and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor expression in the infant mouse brainstem
2016, NeuroToxicologyCitation Excerpt :Recently, it was reported that prenatal SE directly diminishes central chemoreception in the neonatal rat (Lei et al., 2015). Furthermore, it has been reported that infants born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy, have diminished ventilatory response to hypoxia in both humans (Ueda et al., 1999) and rats (Neff et al., 2004). Thus a change in α3, α4, α5 and β1 expression in the NTS may disturb the homeostatic processes that enable the central chemoreceptors that stimulate the respiratory centre to increase ventilation when CO2 or H+ levels rise.
Prenatal nicotine exposure increases hyperventilation in α4-knock-out mice during mild asphyxia
2015, Respiratory Physiology and NeurobiologyCitation Excerpt :Nicotine exposure during foetal development impairs ventilation and associated responses of mammalian neonates. Prenatal nicotine exposure depresses ventilatory drive in human infants and rat pups (St.-John and Leiter, 1999; Ueda et al., 1999), delays the arousal response to hypoxia in lambs and human infants (Hafstrom et al., 2000; Parsiow et al., 2004), increases apneas in rats (Fewell and Smith, 1998) and in rats and mice, blunts the hyperventilatory responses to hypoxia and hypercapnia (Eugenin et al., 2008; Huang et al., 2010). As the main targets of nicotine, nicotine acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are most likely involved.
Cardio-respiratory control during sleep in infancy
2014, Paediatric Respiratory Reviews
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From the Division of Clinical Sciences, TVW Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth, Western Australia; Department of Respiratory Medicine, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Perth; University Department of Paediatrics, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
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Supported in part by grant No. 970164 National Health Medical Research Council, Australia.
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Reprint requests: Peter D. Sly, MD, Head, Division of Clinical Sciences, TVWT Institute for Child Health Research, PO Box 855, West Perth 6872, Western Australia, Australia.
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