Chest
Clinical InvestigationsThe Relationship of the Peripheral Leukocyte Count and Cigarette Smoking to Pulmonary Function Among Adult Men
Section snippets
Population
The population of this study was 2,144 men, 21 to 80 years of age, participating in the Normative Aging Study.9 The Normative Aging Study is a longitudinal study of aging initiated in 1963 and located at the Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic in Boston. As previously published,9 volunteers were screened according to health criteria at entry. As a consequence of the prescreening, the Normative Aging Study provided a population with no known chronic medical conditions at the outset of the
RESULTS
Leukocyte counts were highest in current smokers, particularly in those who smoked more than 20 cigarettes per day, and lowest in never smokers (F3, 1505 = 91.74, p<0.001, analysis of covariance; Table 1).
Mean baseline pulmonary function levels, adjusted for age and height, are presented for various leukocyte count (tertiles) and smoking status groups in Table 2. As expected, FVC and FEV1 levels were higher in never smokers than in former smokers which were, in turn, higher than in current
DISCUSSION
The findings of this study clearly confirm earlier epidemiologic studies that document a relationship between cigarette smoking and the peripheral leukocyte count.7, 8 In our study, leukocyte counts of current smokers were roughly 1,500 cells/cu mm higher than those of never smokers (Table 1). This effect seems to be immediate and occurs with relatively few cigarettes, and there seems to be little difference between never and exsmokers.7 The mechanism for this increase is unknown, although both
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Support for this research provided by the Medical Research Service of The Veterans Administration.
Manuscript received December 14; revision accepted February 29.