Researchers found that babies of women who smoke cigarettes have abnormal heart rates and blood pressures as compared to infants of nonsmoking mothers, which gets worse as infants get older according to a recent study appearing in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. The study was conducted using the tilt table test in which babies of smoking mothers and nonsmoking mothers were tested for circulatory responses. The test measures various bodily responses while the patient or baby in this case is tilted to different angles on a tilt table, usually with head up. The tilt table itself is a padded table or plinth, equipped with a footboard, to which a patient can be strapped for rotation to nearly an upright position. It is mainly used in cases where spinal cord and other neurological disorders are suspected to enhance blood flow to lower limbs. It also aids in muscle training and sense of balance, Dorland’s Medical Dictionary.

The tilt test performed by the researchers examined how the infants’ bodies coped with repositioning during the test. Blood pressure responses were recorded while the babies were being tilted upright during sleep. A very noticeable and dramatic difference in babies born to smoking mothers compared to those born to nonsmoking women was discovered.

According to the study, infants that did not get exposed to tobacco smoke experienced only a 2 percent increase in blood pressure when they were tilted upright at one week of age and later a 10 percent increase in blood pressure at one year of age. Infants of smoking mothers on the other hand, had the opposite effect-displaying a whopping 10 percent increase in blood pressure during a tilt at one week of age and a 4 percent increase at one year of age, the study found. These disparaging results became even more alarming when the infants got older-at three months of age and one year of age, the heart rate response to tilting in the tobacco-exposed infants was even more abnormal as compared to those of nonsmoking mothers, the researchers reported.

This study revealed for the first time that babies of smokers have persistent problems in blood pressure regulation that start at birth and get worse over time. Therefore, early life exposure to tobacco smoke can lead to long-lasting reprogramming effects on people’s blood pressure control mechanism, thus compromising people’s health as long as they live, said the researchers.

The study consists of 19 infants from parents who don’t smoke and 17 infants from women who smoke on the average 15 cigarettes per day. Infants were fed breast milk and had normal weight, the study states. All infants in the study had their blood pressure and heart rates taken when they were asleep. They were tilted up at a 60 degree angle during the first weeks of a three month and one year study. They were then lowered back down to the horizontal position, facing up.

The researchers also found that when tobacco smoke-exposed infants were tilted slightly upright and then back down again, their blood pressures went haywire, functioning in erratic ways. Normally, when a person stands up, that person’s heart rate or blood pressure increases, so blood can get to the brain easily, and if that person lay back down, the heart rate or blood pressure would normally slows down and goes back to normal. If we were to equate this scenario with babies of cigarette smoking mothers, we would get the opposite effect. Their blood pressure would actually increase when they are laid back down after standing up–tilting up. Therefore, if the researchers were to placed these infants from smoking mothers in a tilted positioned again, their blood pressure would become low. This would be the perfect condition for fainting-not enough blood to the brain, Dorland’s Medical Dictionary.

This research will continue until the babies get older, so that the researchers can continue to observe whether or not these infants will develop cardiovascular disease in adulthood, the researchers said.

Identifying early warning signs of heart disease in infants could have great public health significance-possibly leading to early diagnosis, treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease early in life according to the researchers.

In conclusion, babies of mothers who smoke cigarettes could eventually develop heart disease according to a recent study. The table tilt test was used to test infants of cigarette-smoking mothers and infants of nonsmoking mothers. The findings were staggering-infants of mothers who smoke cigarettes showed abnormal and erratic blood pressures while infants of nonsmoking mothers did not.