Highlights
- Cigarette smoke can inflame the intestine and can cause Crohn’s disease.
- Crohn’s disease is more likely to occur in people with airway diseases, suggesting that inflammation in the lungs is linked with inflammation in the gut.
- Increased levels of CD4+ T cells, a type of white blood cell, which release a pro-inflammatory protein might be the reason for Crohn’s disease.
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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.
"The airways and the intestinal system have a lot in common," says Hyunsu Bae, of Kyung Hee University in South Korea. "Interestingly, in Traditional Korean Medicine, a connection between the lung and the large intestine has long been emphasized. Crohn’s disease is more likely to occur in people with airway diseases, suggesting that inflammation in the lungs is linked with inflammation in the gut."
Effect of Smoking On the Intestine
Bae and colleagues exposed mice to smoke from twenty cigarettes a day, six days a week, for a few weeks. The research team then examined the presence of inflammation in the mice’s lungs and colons.
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.
The team were now confident that CD4+ T cells were responsible for the cigarette smoke-induced colitis. Also, the team also exposed mice to cigarette smoke, and then isolated CD4+ T cells from tissue near their lungs. They then injected the cells into mice that had never been exposed to smoke. The injected cells migrated to the colon, and the non-smoke-exposed mice developed colitis shortly after.
"Our results suggest that cigarette smoking activates specific white blood cells in the lung, which might later move to the colon, triggering bowel inflammation," explains Jinju Kim, another researcher involved in the study.
"Smokers, especially those who also have bowel disease, should reduce their smoking." The findings could also help scientists to develop new treatments for Crohn’s disease.
Reference
- Gihyun Lee, Kyoung-Hwa Jung, Dasom Shin, Chanju Lee, Woogyeong Kim, Sujin Lee, Jinju Kim and Hyunsu Bae. ‘Cigarette smoking triggers colitis by IFN-ɣ+ CD4+ T cells.’ Front. Immunol doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.01344.
Source-Medindia