Abstract:

Smoking is a practice to burn and inhale the smoke and is primarily a route of administration for recreational drugs. The combustion releases the active substances in drugs such as nicotine and make them available for absorption through the lungs.The most common form of smoking is ciggarate smoking and is associated with life threatening complications such as heart diseases, lung cancer, atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosios, immune system dysfunction, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, miscarriage, premature birth and dysfunctions of reproductive system as well. Smoking forgives almost every organ of the body however, compared to the volume of research on the cardiovascular, pulmonary and cancer related health consequences of chronic smoking, less attention has been devoted to investigation of its effects on human neurocognition and brain neurobiology. In central nervous system, it leads to deficiencies in auditory verbal learning and/or memory, general intellectual abilities, visual search speeds, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, working memory and executive functions across a wide age range. The present work makes an effort to compile the evidence to challenge the notion/myth that smoking may be neuroprotective in cases of Alzheimer's disease. The neuroprotective effects of smoking may be accredited only to nicotinic content of cigarette smoke that too in part, but smoke is a deadly mixture of thousands of chemicals that must have disastrous effect on the central nervous system. The various effects of cigarette smoke and its ingredients on pathological markers of Alzheimer's disease as oxidative stress, senile plaques, tau hyperphosphorylation, neuroinflammation, synapse loss and effects on blood brain barrier are disussed.

Keywords: