Heart Disease Predicted With Toenail Clippings
It is an established fact that smokers have a higher risk of heart disease than non-smokers, but means of testing smokers’ nicotine levels are somewhat unreliable. Researchers seem to have found a much more accurate means of obtaining a smoker’s history than the current, unreliable means of asking a smoker or testing nicotine breakdown products in saliva or urine. A U.S. study in Nurses’ Health suggests that measuring nicotine content in toenail clippings can assist in prediction of women’s risk of heart disease.
Current methods of measuring nicotine content only reflect usage or exposure within recent days. Toenails may offer a more long term estimate of a person’s level of exposure to tobacco due to their slow growth, according to study leader Dr. Wael Al-Delaimy, of the University of California in San Diego. Toenail clippings would also weigh in exposure to passive smoking and smoking habits such as how much smoke a person inhales with each puff.
Toenails from 62,641 women were collected in 1982, and the nicotine content in these clippings were correlated with their risk of being diagnosed with heart disease between 1984 and 1998. Over the period of the study, over 900 women were diagnosed with heart disease.
Research showed that the women who were diagnosed averaged double the amount of nicotine in their toenails than women without heart disease. The study also revealed that the nicotine in toenails was a risk factor for heart disease even independently of the number of cigarettes a person smoked.
Al-Delaimy’s investigation revealed that the women in the top fifth of the group for toenail nicotine content were heavier drinkers, thinner, less active, more likely to have a family history of heart attack, and more likely to have high blood pressure or diabetes than those with less nicotine in their toenails. Those women in the top fifth were found, after some adjustment for other risk factors, to have nearly four times the risk of heart disease than those in the bottom fifth.
Al-Delaimy claimed, “The use of toenail nicotine is a novel way to objectively measure exposure to tobacco smoke and could become a useful test to identify high-risk individuals in the future, especially in circumstances when smoking history is not available or is subject to bias.”
A cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, Ellen Mason, claimed that the study goes to show that smokers are bringing more health problems into their futures by continuing such an activity. According to Mason, “Men and women who smoke are around twice as likely to suffer a heart attack in their life time as those who don’t, and quitting smoking is one of the most effective ways to reduce this risk.”
Mason also stated, “People using nicotine replacement therapy should not be alarmed by this study as it is the other chemicals inhaled when smoking, such as carbon monoxide that cause the risk of heart disease, not nicotine."
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