The greater the amount of nicotine in the blood, the more oxygen deficient smokers will have during their sleep.
- Increased nicotine levels are associated with a 2.3 minute increase in time spent with oxygen saturations below 90%.
- For every cigarette a person smokes, the risk of having “dangerously low” oxygen levels increases.
The month of November is the Month without tobacco, an operation which aims to raise awareness of the harmful effects for smokers and to support those who wish to quit. Consuming tobacco is not trivial and kills almost 75,000 people each year. In a first-of-its-kind study, Australian scientists from Heart Research Institute (HRI) have linked the amounts of nicotine in the blood to how long smokers have less oxygen while they sleep. They presented their results on October 17 in the journal ESC Heart Failure.
Quantifying the effects of tobacco
Researchers found that increased nicotine levels are associated with a 2.3-minute increase in time spent with oxygen saturations below 90%. This means that for every cigarette a person smokes, the risk of having “dangerously low” oxygen levels increases. “We know that smoking is bad for the heart – it’s one of the main risks of heart attack – and although smoking is known to reduce the concentration of oxygen in the blood, the interaction of smoking with apnea sleep was not quantifiedsaid Dr. John O’Sullivan, principal investigator of the study. Using blood concentrations of the main metabolite of nicotine, we were able for the first time to quantify the effect of smoking on nighttime oxygen concentrations in people with sleep apnea..”
The 90% threshold is important because one of the markers of sleep apnea severity is time spent with oxygen saturation below 90%. At these levels, the throat and upper airways are partially or completely obstructed during sleep, causing short periods of cessation of breathing. “People who spend more time with oxygen saturation below 90 percent end up having more cardiovascular deaths than people who don’t.”, added John O’Sullivan.
Track blood metabolite levels
To link sleep apnea and congestive heart failure, researchers used hundreds of small molecules, called metabolites, to understand this interaction. The team studied metabolites and lipids in nearly 3,500 people included in two American cohorts. “Accurate measurement of disease combined with blood metabolite levels is much more accurate than self-reported questionnaires, this is one of the strengths of this study”, continued the lead author of the study.
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