Stenosis of Carotid Arteries and Concentration of Some Blood Lipid Parameters amongst Tobacco Smokers in Abha: A Case–Control Study

• Published in: Applied sciences Vol. 11; no. 5; p. 2001
• Main Authors: Alelyani, Magbool, Al-Saleem Alshahrani, Safar Abadi Saeed, Zaman, Gaffar Sarwar, Hadadi, Ibrahim, Musa, Mustafa Jafar, Adam, Mohamed, Mohammed, Mohammed Elimam Ahamed
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-03-2021
• Subjects: Abnormalities; Age; Arteriosclerosis; Atherosclerosis; Blood; Blood levels; Body mass index; Cardiovascular disease; Cardiovascular diseases; Carotid arteries; Cholesterol; Coronary artery disease; Diabetes; HDL; Health risks; Heart diseases; High density lipoprotein; Hypertension; Informed consent; intima–media thickness; Investigations; Lipids; Low density lipoprotein; Males; right carotid artery; Risk analysis; Risk factors; Smoking; Stenosis; Stroke; Thickness; Tobacco; total cholesterol; Triglycerides; Ultrasound; Variance analysis; Veins & arteries; Saudi Arabia
• ISSN: 2076-3417; 2076-3417
• DOI: 10.3390/app11052001

Smoking is well known to be correlated with cardiovascular abnormalities, in particular atherosclerosis and heart diseases. This article investigates the effect and relationship of smoking tobacco on the thickness of the intima–media (IMT) belonging to the common carotid arteries (CCAs), and also blood concentration of the lipid profile (LP), mainly the total cholesterol, High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and also triglycerides. Nineteen male tobacco smokers and thirty-five healthy male non-smoking Saudi participants were involved in this study after obtaining their informed consent. An ultrasound and a spectrophotometer were used to determine the IMTs and lipid parameters, respectively. The thicknesses of the smokers’ right (RCA) and left carotid (LCA) arteries (0.72 and 0.7 mm, respectively) were significantly greater than the thicknesses of the arteries of the non-smokers (0.58 and 0.62 mm, respectively) (p-value = 0.005 and 0.04). Insignificant differences between the means of the other parameters in the two groups were studied. Smoking is a risk factor for stroke, because it significantly increases the IMTs of both the right and left carotid arteries.