1/10. Several clinical trials have shown that the mean nasal mucociliary clearance is negatively and significantly affected by cigarette smoking (PMIDs: 24669080, 3787531, 23615315,

@ChaunceyGardner 2/10. Ciliary beat frequency is also significantly affected by smoking habit. A reduced nasal ciliary beat frequency was observed among smoking individuals in a cohort study performed in a British urban population (PMID: 9669071).
@ChaunceyGardner 3/10. In vitro, using human 3D epithelial cultures, cigarette smoke affects the cilia beat frequency in nasal and bronchial tissue cultures (PMIDs: 33220401, 30090531). In vivo, smoke exposure also affects cilia beat frequency in mice (PMID: 20042711).
@ChaunceyGardner 4/10. Given the consistency of these observations, and the dose response (e.g. PMID: 23615315), these mucociliary clearance-related endpoints are translational between human clinical, human in vitro and in vivo animal studies.
@ChaunceyGardner 5/10. Smoking cessation leads to an improvement of mucociliary clearance (PMIDs: 21545372, 24863424, https://t.co/BmFu2AnabI). Hence, the cilia function recovers over time following smoking cessation (as you wrote in your Tweet).
@ChaunceyGardner 6/10. Now, the important question: How does switching to a heated tobacco product or an e-vapor product affect mucociliary clearance and cilia function?
@ChaunceyGardner 7/10. In vitro, these product aerosols do not significantly affect cilia function (PMIDs: 33220401, 30090531).
@ChaunceyGardner 8/10. In humans, switching to these products leads to an improvement of mucociliary clearance similar to that following smoking cessation (https://t.co/BmFu2AnabI).
@ChaunceyGardner 9/10. Why is this important? Impaired mucociliary clearance predisposes COPD patients to exacerbations (PMIDs: 32640859, 25389352), and cessation reduces the number of these exacerbations.
@ChaunceyGardner 10/10. Similar to cessation, switching to an e-vapor (PMID: 33101622) or heated tobacco product (https://t.co/LhS1PP3GMt; https://t.co/X9IIN4HfWK) reduces the number of exacerbations and improves the patients’ CAT score.

More from Health

Some thoughts on this: Firstly, it might be personal preference, but I am not keen on this kind of campaign as I feel like it trivialises cancer. Sometimes the serious message gets lost because people are sharing pics of cats or whatever and the important context is gone.


More importantly, the statistic being used in the campaign is misleading. It says 57% of women put off cervical screening if they can't get waxed. But on further investigation, that's not accurate.

The page here goes on to say "57% of women who regularly have their pubic hair professionally removed would put off attending their cervical screening appointment if they hadn’t been able to visit a beauty salon."

So the 57% represents a concern not across the whole population of women, but only those who regularly get waxed. So how big of an issue is this across the whole population? And what else is stopping people getting smears?

I think campaigns for cancer screening are really tricky because there is so much nuance that often doesn't fit into a catchy headline or hashtag. It's certainly not easy and is part of a bigger conversation.

You May Also Like