Huntington Medical Research Institute Teams Link Nicotine to More Severe Heart Attacks

While scientists have long known that smoking is bad for health, new research led by the Huntington Medical Research Institute in Pasadena has found that nicotine, used in both tobacco and vaping devices, may increase the severity of heart attacks for users.

The preclinical study, published last week in the journal Heliyon, found that the ingestion of nicotine near or at the time of a heart attack “can further increase the size of the heart attack, resulting in a more significant impact on recovery,” HMRI said in a written statement.

The addictive chemical nicotine has long been associated with problems including high blood pressure, premature atherosclerosis and cardiac events, according to the institute. But little is known about its effects on heart attacks, the study authors wrote.

“However, in this study HMRI’s Chief Science Officer Robert A. Kloner, MD, PhD, Neurosciences Science Director Michael Harrington MB, ChB, FRCP, and their team have uncovered that research subjects exposed to nicotine during or close to the time of their experimentally induced heart attack increased their blood pressure causing larger heart attacks that kill off more heart cells and further reduce the heart’s ability to pump,” the statement said.

The researchers studied sedated lab rats, providing them doses of nicotine before inducing heart failure, according to the study.

“Our findings indicate that acute nicotine exposure can transiently elevate [blood pressure] in healthy anesthetized [female Sprague-Dawley] rats and increase myocardial infarct size in an acute myocardial ischemia and reperfusion rat model,” the study states. “The increase in infarct size may reflect a more direct effect on the myocardium.”

The study can be accessed online at sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020322933.

More information on the Huntington Medical Research Institute is available at hmri.org.