A recent study published in the December 2009 American Journal of Epidemiology suggests the children who are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke at home are more likely to develop early emphysema in adulthood implicating that the effect of early-life exposures to tobacco smoke (ETS) could persist for decades on the lungs.
The researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health were involved in the study which aims to find if there is a possible association between childhood ETS(Early exposure to tobacco smoke) and early emphysema. The CT scans of nonsmokers were analyzed for this purpose.Nearly 50 percent of the participants had lived with atleast one regular cigarette smoker in their childhood. Participants with more childhood ETS exposure had more emphysema-like lung pixels; an average of 20% of scan pixels were emphysema-like for those who lived with two or more smokers as a child, compared with 18% for those who lived with one regular smoker, or 17% for those who said that they did not live with a regular inside smoker as a child.
CT scans of 1,781 non-smokers without clinical cardiovascular disease recruited from six communities in the United States, including northern Manhattan and the Bronx, New York revealed that those reporting childhood ETS exposure were somewhat younger, with an average age of 61; were more likely to be non- Hispanic white; and less likely to have been born outside the United States. These differences were statistically controlled in the analyses.
Gina Lovasi, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health says that they were able to make out a clear cut difference in the CT scans of participants who lived with a smoker as a child and those who did not.On the whole this new research suggests that effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs may persist for decades. Previous studies have found evidence that childhood ETS exposure affects perinatal and childhood health outcomes, and that adult exposure may affect adult respiratory health outcomes, including lung function and respiratory symptoms.
