It has long been known that smokers are at a much higher risk for developing heart disease than are nonsmokers. Some smokers hope that taking antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E, can reduce their risk of smoking-related heart trouble. However, research reported in the February 2000 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests that while very high doses of vitamin E may be helpful in improving short-term changes in artery function after smoking, it cannot reverse established blood vessel abnormalities in smokers. Smokers' arteries are more likely to develop fatty deposits, or atherosclerosis, and become less elastic than arteries of nonsmokers. One aspect of arterial function that worsens with smoking is dilation, or expansion, of the arteries when blood flow through them increases.
Smoking appears to decrease an artery's ability to widen when necessary.
Such a lack of arterial dilation could lead to diminished blood flow to the heart. If it continues, a heart attack might result. The researchers, from the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna, Austria, studied the arterial dilation of 22 healthy young men, with an average age of 27, who smoked about a pack of cigarettes per day. These groups were also compared with a matched group of 11 healthy nonsmokers. To measure arterial function, the researchers used a blood pressure cuff to compress each subject's brachial artery, a large artery in the upper arm, and then released the pressure.