Gestational dependent responses to second hand smoke (SHS) in mouse pregnancies

Exposure to cigarette smoke is known to induce disease during pregnancy. Recent evidence showed that exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) negatively impacts fetal and placental weights leading to the development of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) in mice. Hypertension and proteinuria are two important hallmarks of obstetric pathology leading to the development of preeclampsia (PE). In the present study, we wanted to determine the effects SHS exposure at two different important gestational points during mouse pregnancy. C57/Bl6 mice were exposed to SHS via a nose-only delivery system (Scireq) for 4 days (from 14.5 gestational day (dGA) to 17.5 dGA) or for 6 days (from 12.5 dGA to 17.5 dGA). At the time of necropsy (18.5 dGA) placental and fetal weights were recorded. Maternal blood pressure was determined with a tail occlusion cuff (Kent Scientific) and dip stick test for proteinuria was obtained. Treatment with SHS showed: 1) a significant decrease in placental weight (p<0.0001) and fetal weight (p<0.0002) following 4 days of exposure, 2) higher systolic (p<0.02) and diastolic (p<0.02) blood pressure following 6 days of exposure, and 3) increased proteinuria after 6 days of exposure. We conclude that detrimental effects of SHS coincides with the length of maternal exposure. We confirmed that 4 days of exposure resulted in metrics common to IUGR while 6 days of exposure more closely resembled PE pathology. These results could be beneficial in understanding the long-term effects of SHS exposure and the development of placental diseases. NIH 1R15HD108743 This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.