Circulation: smoking will change the intestinal flora. Quitting smoking will also change the intestinal flora. Smoking or quitting smoking?

December 8, 2019 / biool / - recently, in a research report published in the international journal Circulation, scientists from the American Heart Association found that quitting smoking may cause significant changes in the intestinal flora of the body, while researchers revealed the relationship between the intestinal flora and the cardiovascular health of the body Photo source: Previous research results of cc0 public domain show that smoking can reduce the diversity of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract of the body In this study, the researchers studied 26 people who tried to quit smoking, and analyzed the fecal samples of the participants at the beginning of the study, two weeks later and 12 weeks later; researcher Marcus Sublette said that quitting smoking may change the intestinal microflora of the body Now we know that smoking will change the intestinal microflora In this study, researchers found that quitting smoking will continue to change the intestinal microflora, so is it good or bad? The results showed that the improvement of intestinal flora diversity was related to the decrease of heart rate, systolic blood pressure and C-reactive protein (the level of which will increase when inflammation occurs), and the level of hemoglobin All of these changes are indirect indicators of the improvement of the body's health At the same time, the researchers also speculate that whether the intestinal microbiome is related to the occurrence of cardiovascular disease? They found that people who quit smoking had lower levels of scleroderma bacteria in their intestines and higher levels of Bacteroides, which previous studies suggested might be a way to reduce the risk of diabetes and obesity It is difficult for researchers to know exactly what this proportion means, because our research on intestinal microbiome and cardiovascular disease is still in the early stage of abstinence, but it seems that further research can be carried out In addition, the limitations of this study are that the number of patients is small, the scope of research is narrow, the researchers do not study the exact bacterial species, but study the large and small groups Bacteria or a larger proportion of bacteria In the next step, they plan to study mice transplanted with human bacteria If the microbes from a persistent smoker and a successful smoker are transplanted to a sterile mouse, how will this change the progress of atherosclerosis in mice? Later researchers will continue to study in depth Finally, researcher Hazen said that the change of the environment we are exposed to may affect the host's health in many ways, including the transfer of intestinal microflora, etc., and what kind of changes will occur after quitting smoking may be a very interesting topic, which deserves further research and exploration by scientists Original source: Marcus g sublette, Tzu Wen l cross, claudia e korcarz, et al Abstract 9944: effects of smoking cession on the internal microbiota, circulation, 11 Nov 2019, DOI: 10.1161/circ.140.supply_1.9944