The influence of maternal nicotine exposure on neonatal lung development: An enzymatic and metabolic study

Abstract

Chapter I, the literature review, gives the reader a sound background knowledge of the following: normal lung structural development in humans and rats, metabolic development with reference to structural development, tobacco smoke and nicotine and the effect of nicotine and smoking on metabolism. This will enable the reader to understand the motivation for this study and to give insight to the following chapters.

Chapter II comprises the influence of maternal nicotine exposure on the enzymes, hexokinase and phosphofructokinase. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of maternal nicotine exposure during pregnancy and lactation on the enzymes involved in the control of energy metabolism of developing lungs of rats at postnatal days 1, 7,14,21 and 49. The objectives were to determine the effect of maternal nicotine exposure during gestation and lactation on, (a) the activity of selected allosteric enzymes, hexokinase (HK) andphosphofructokinase (PFK), (b) the influence of various ATP concentrations and ATP/ADP ratios within the reaction medium on the activity of these enzymes and (c) to express the activity of these enzymes as a function of age and (d) to correlate the findings with the stage of neonatal lung structural development as explained in the literature. Female Wistar rats were used in this study. The pregnant rats were randomly assigned as a control and an experimental (nicotine) group. The experimental dams received a single dosage of 1 mg nicotinel/ kg body weight/day subcutaneously and the controls received the same volume of saline. The enzymatic activity was determine by means of spectrophotometery. It was found that HK and PFK activity are age dependent.