Sodium pertechnetate (Na99mTcO4) biodistribution in mice exposed to cigarette smoke

Fifteen BALB/c male mice were exposed to the smoke of nine whole commercial cigarettes per day, 3 times/day, for up to 10 days to whole body exposure in a chamber. A control group of 5 BALB/c male mice was sham-smoked. One day later, the exposed and control groups of mice received (7.4 MBq/0.3 ml) of Na99mTcO4 before being killed at 30 min. Bones, brain, heart, intestine, kidney, liver, lungs, muscle, pancreas, spleen, stomach, testis and thyroid were weighed and these organs and blood radioactivity recorded with a gamma counter. The percentage per gram of tissue of injected dose (%ID/g) was determined for each organ.Cigarette smoke significantly decreased (p < 0.05) the %ID/g in red blood cells, bone, kidney, lung, spleen, stomach, testis and thyroid of the exposed mice.The toxic effects of cigarette smoke reduced the Na99mTcO4 biodistribution.Tobacco can be smoked in cigarettes, cigars, pipe, water pipes, or chewed. It is as an important cash crop, and has vast economical impact affecting the livelihoods of the farmers growing it, the companies that manufacture it, and the healthcare system that deals with the consequences of using it. Cigarette smoking (CS), the most popular method of smoking tobacco, is one of the most prevalent social habits practiced worldwide today [1]. The World Health Organization estimated that almost 1.1 billion people are smokers. Smoking has been identified as the leading preventable cause of death and disability in the world [2,3].The development of diagnostic tools using radioisotopes is widely used in almost all hospitals nationwide. In nuclear medicine practice, physicians set norms for morphological or physiological function for each organ by diagnosing a large number of patients. For every procedure, there is diagnostic data for a range of normal variations familiar to physicians. Nuclear medicine practitioners interpret diseases on the basis of deviations from these limits [4]. Radioisotopes provide vital information to help diag