A light Microscopic Study of the effects of Smoking on Apoptosis Process in Epithelial Cells Lining the Mouth

Abstract

It is well known fact that smoking and chewing of tobacco products has a number of well documented detrimental effects on the oral cavity and it is evident that oral cancer risk is related to both intensity and duration of tobacco smoking. This study was design to revel the effects of smoking on the apoptosis process and degeneration of epithelial cells lining mouth. Specimens were collecting from the epithelial lining cells of smokers and non-smokers mouth. Smears were stained with giemsa stain to study the epithelial cells. The results have shown that the percentage of apoptotic and degenerated cells in smoker were higher than that of non-smoker. This percentage shows increment with the increment of smoker years these changes cause congestion of the tissue lining mouth which become a good environment to the microorganism growth, which lead to infiltration of inflammatory cells. From this study it has been concluded that smoke of Tobacco have direct effects on the DNA of epithelial cells lining mouth, which lead to carcinogenic risk