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Exposure to nicotine during pregnancy and shortly after birth can have a lasting impact on a child's immune system and cause more severe respiratory infections later in life, a new study from researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows.

Prenatal nicotine exposure has long been known to cause a range of health issues, from premature birth to increased respiratory illnesses, but scientists have not clearly understood the processes that cause these vulnerabilities.

Now, research published in Stem Cell Reports shows that in mouse models, nicotine exposure during pregnancy and just after birth alters the stem cells that create the body's blood cells and other crucial lung immune cells. This leads to increased susceptibility to and severity of influenza, and likely other respiratory diseases, later in life.

"This study is not on all the compounds you inhale while smoking a cigarette; it is really on the addictive compound nicotine," said Marcel Rommel, a study author and postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz. "During pregnancy, clinicians sometimes recommend nicotine replacement therapy, such as patches or gum, to help patients quit smoking. These products still contain nicotine, and our study suggests that nicotine itself negatively affects the development of the immune system."

This research was led by the lab of Camilla Forsberg, a professor of biomolecular engineering, at the Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells (IBSC) and the Baskin School of Engineering.

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