EFFECTS OF PRENATAL EXPOSURE TO NICOTINE ON PRIMATE LUNG DEVELOPMENT

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Maternal smoking is the major preventable cause of intrauterine growth retardation and prematurity. Recent evidence shows that developing lung is also highly sensitive to maternal smoking and that smoking during pregnancy leads to decreased lung function, increased respiratory diseases and increased incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the offspring. Given that every year more than 400,000 infants in the US alone are born to women who smoked during pregnancy, it is of major importance to find ways to prevent those changes. Our data shows that nicotine is one of the factors responsible for the changes in pulmonary function present in children born to smoking mothers. In this project, rhesus monkeys are used to characterize the effects of chronic exposure to low levels of nicotine throughout pregnancy on lung development and function. The purposes of this project are to 1) characterize the molecular basis for nicotine's actions by determining how nicotine effects the functioning of nicotinic receptors in fetal monkey lung; 2) characterize the effect of fetal nicotine exposure on lung development by functional, morphometric, immunohistochemical and molecular analysis; and 3) develop ways to block the effects of nicotine on lung development that can lead to clinical interventions that can be combined with vigorous smoking cessation programs in pregnant smokers in order to help the offspring of smoking mothers.