Passive smoking evokes excess cell death in embryonic golden hamster neuroepithelium during the formation of neural tube.

Objective: To sdudy the effect of passive smoking on the development of embryonic golden hamsters neuroepithelium, and to investigate the possible mechanisms of teratogenesis caused by passive smoking. Metheds: The pregnant golden hamsters were put in the selfmade chamber for passive smoking, in order to establish teratogenesis model of passive smoking. The development of embryos was observed with anatomic microscope. And the pyknotic cells and mitotic figures were counted with toluidine blue stained. Results: Passive smoking could induce teratogenesis during neurulation (χ2 =51.28,P0.01). By counting pyknotic cells and mitotic figures, we found that the number of pyknotic cells within the neuroepithelial of passive smoking group increased more than one time compared with the control group (F=21.95,P0.01), besides that the cell damages, we also found that of mitotic figures were higher than control group ( F=11.91,P0.01). Conclusion: Tobacco smoking might induce excess degeneration, death, and cells loss in the neural epithelium, thereby resulting in failure of formation and differentiation of neural tube. Although enhanced mitosis could represent partial compensation for cell loss, it could not be remedied that neural tube defects were caused by the excess cell death.