New research which suggests a direct link between smoking and brain damage will be published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry.

Researchers, led by Debapriya Ghosh and Dr Anirban Basu from the Indian National Brain Research Center (NBRC), have found that a compound in tobacco provokes white blood cells in the central nervous system to attack healthy cells, leading to severe neurological damage.

Unlike alcohol or drug abuse NNK does not appear to harm brain cells directly, however, the research team believe it may cause neuroinflamation, a condition which leads to disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis.

"Considering the extreme economical and disease burden of neuroinflammation related disorders, it is extremely important from a medical, social and economic point of view to discover if NNK in tobacco causes neuroinflammation" said Ghosh.

To prove if such a link exists the team conducted two types of tests, one outside of a living host in glass and one in laboratory mice. The team used blot analysis techniques which showed that the introduction of NNK resulted in a clear increase in proinflammatory signaling proteins, proinflammatory effector proteins and other stress related proteins. Increased levels of proinflammatory cytokines, which act as molecular messengers between cells, were also detected.

This shows that NNK provokes an exaggerated response from the brain's immune cells, known as microglia. Microglia cells act as 'destroyers' for the brain by attacking damaged or unhealthy cells. However, when provoked by NNK these cells start to attack healthy brain cells rather than the unhealthy cells they are supposed to attack.

"Our findings prove that tobacco compound NNK can activate microglia significantly which subsequently harms the nerve cells," said Basu.

Source: Wiley - Blackwell