A Comparative Study of the Effect of Oral Contraceptives and Cigarette Smoking on Platelet Adhesiveness

Abstract

The aim of this work was to discover to what extent cigarette smoking and oral contraceptives, either separately or in association, are responsible for platelet adhesiveness changes in humans. Platelet adhesiveness has been measured in 77 subjects, smokers and nonsmokers. 47 of these subjects were women both using and not using oral contraceptives. Cigarette smoking significantly increases platelet adhesiveness both in men and women. On the contrary, if no distinction is made in the smoking habits of female volunteers and they are only divided into two groups according to the use or nonuse of oral contraceptives, no significant change in platelet adhesiveness occurs following intake of oral contraceptives.

THE MEASUREMENT OF PLASMA THROMBOXANE B2 AND THE EFFECT OF SMOKING

“…Since increasing evidence points to the importance of coronary thrombosis in acute infarction (Rentrop el a1 1979), it is relevant to search for a possible role of smoking in the thrombotic process. Some studies have claimed platelet 'adhesiveness' or stimulated aggregation to be greater in smokers (Erikssen, Hellem & Stormorken 1977;Strolin-Benedetti, Gutty & Strolin 1976) or to be increased by smoking (Levine 1973;Grignani, Gainba & Ascari 1977) while other studies have denied M. S1iirn7 et a/ this (Morgan et a/ 1980;Siess et a1 1982). Recently there has been great interest in the role of the prostanoids in platelet aggregation and myocardial ischaemia (Smith, Araki & Lefer 1980) but these studies are fraught with technical problems of sampling and assay (FitzGerald, Pedersen & Patrono 1983).…”