Abstract
Exposure to passive smoking is usually associated with heavy changes in both function and structure of the cardiovascular system at different levels: coronary circulation, heart metabolism, myocardial muscle. These changes may be transient but may have characteristics of irreversibility. Major determinant of cardiovascular alterations is hypoxia due to tobacco products of the environment although a large number of alterations affect immune t-cells and antibody response. All infectious diseases which involve cardiovascular system, including some tropical patterns, particularly Chagas disease, are adversely influenced as a consequence of a continuous although irregular exposure to passive smoking, which worsens the degree of cardiac muscle alterations at different levels like myocardium, coronary arteries and both these structures. Therefore, exposure to passive smoking must be avoided for those individuals suffering from infectious diseases of the heart whatever factor can be responsible.
Highlights
Exposure to passive smoking is usually associated with heavy changes in both function and structure of the cardiovascular system at different levels: coronary circulation, heart metabolism, myocardial muscle
All infectious diseases which involve cardiovascular system, including some tropical patterns, Chagas disease, are adversely influenced as a consequence of a continuous irregular exposure to passive smoking, which worsens the degree of cardiac muscle alterations at different levels like myocardium, coronary arteries and both these structures
Apart from by direct interference of passive smoking with the coronary circulation, which is often involved by protozoan, the development of cardiovascular alterations can be regularly seen in experimental findings as a consequence of cardiotoxic chemicals of tobacco smoke in humans and animals
Summary
Exposure to passive smoking is a strong hazard for cardiovascular system [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22] since it is able to cause a large series of disorders either of functional or structural type as well as to impair cardiac function in those patients affected by tropical diseases which can involve heart and blood vessels [23,24,25]. Estimating the morphological features of cellular damage of myocardium induced by passive smoking could give confusion in terminology and definition of lesion since other factors can cause similar alterations. The term necrosis may be used to define morphologically damage due to coronary circulation involvement, whereas the same term does not recognize a circulatory mechanism when it is due to a directly toxic action on myocardial cells. This report will describe the main changes that irregular but frequent exposure to passive smoking causes on myocardial and coronary artery cells as well as their possible relationship with those changes caused by tropical agents, restrictive cardiomyopathies
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