Abstract. In recent years, it has become apparent that smoking has a negative impact on renal function, being one of the most important remediable renal risk factors. It has been shown clearly that the risk for high-normal urinary albumin excretion and microalbuminuria is increased in smoking compared with nonsmoking subjects of the general population. Data from the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial indicate that at least in men, smoking increases the risk to reach end-stage renal failure. Smoking is particularly "nephrotoxic" in older subjects, subjects with essential hypertension, and patients with preexisting renal disease. Of interest, the magnitude of the adverse renal effect of smoking seems to be independent of the underlying renal disease. Death-censored renal graft survival is decreased in smokers, indicating that smoking also damages the renal transplant. Cessation of smoking has been shown to reduce the rate of progression of renal failure both in patients with renal disease and in patients with a renal transplant. The mechanisms of smoking-induced renal damage are only partly understood and comprise acute hemodynamic (e.g., increase in BP and presumably intraglomerular pressure) and chronic effects (e.g., endothelial cell dysfunction). Renal failure per se leads to an increased cardiovascular risk. The latter is further aggravated by smoking. Particularly, survival of smokers with diabetes on hemodialysis is abysmal.Smoking has profound effects on systemic and intrarenal hemodynamics. A smoking-induced increase in BP and heart rate had first been reported in 1907 by Hesse (1). Although others had even found an association between smoking and renal damage (2), this has only been confirmed in 1979 in patients with type 1 diabetes (3), and it was not until 1997 (4) that nephrologists became aware of smoking being a major renal risk factor.The effects of smoking on BP were a matter of debate in the 1980s. Large epidemiologic studies had found that smokers are not more frequently hypertensive than nonsmokers (5). These studies, however, did not perform ambulatory BP measurement, which besides that smokers weigh less than their more obese nonsmoking counterparts explains these false-negative results (6). More recent studies using ambulatory BP measurement clearly document that smokers have higher BP than nonsmokers, i.e. an increase of approximately 3 to 12 mmHg in mean arterial pressure (MAP). This has been shown in several studies including healthy subjects, hypertensive subjects, patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and patients with primary renal disease (for review, see reference 7). With an increase of 12 mmHg in MAP, patients with renal disease seem to be particularly prone to the effect of smoking on BP. There is some evidence, at least in hypertensive patients, that elderly subjects (Ͼ50 to 60 yr of age) are more affected than younger subjects (8,9). A recent population-based cross-sectional study investigated 12,417 men who were screened for a routine check-up in France (9). The preval...