Effect of Smoking Cessation on Vascular Function by Measurement the Flow-Mediated Dilation: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Smoking predisposes to endothelial dysfunction; however smoking cessation would have a beneficial effect oncardiovascular risk. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of smoking cessation on vascular function.Methods: This is a comparative, prospective, descriptive, and multicenter study, carried out between March 2018and April 2021 at two Health Services of the National Gendarmerie and at the Laboratory of Physiology andFunctional Explorations of the Faculty of Medicine in Dakar, Senegal. The population included 45 consenting adultmen, divided into 3 groups: active smokers, weaned smokers, and non-smokers. We assessed vascular functionusing the Flow Mediated Dilation (FMD) technique, which consisted of measuring the diameter of the humeralartery at rest and then every 30 seconds after its occlusion.Results: Non-smokers showed better humeral artery dilation at T1 (30 seconds after occlusion release) with ahigher mean FMD than the other 2 groups (p = 0.0007). In addition, FMD kinetics showed that control subjects aswell as weaned subjects had better arterial compliance (p < 0.05) compared to active smokers. FMD1 values werepositively correlated with smoking cessation duration (p = 0.0411; R2 = 0.3374).Conclusion: Our results showed that stopping smoking improves vascular function and thus constitutes ameans of preventing cardiovascular diseases, hence the need to promote smoking cessation in Africa and moreparticularly in Senegal.