RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Effect of Passive Opium Smoking on Cardiovascular Indices of Rabbits with Normal and Ischemic Hearts
Siyavash Joukar1, *, Hamid Najafipour2, Reza Malekpour-Afshar3, Fatemeh Mirzaeipour4, Hamid Reza Nasri4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 1
Last Page: 6
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-4-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401004010001
Article History:
Received Date: 10/11/2009Revision Received Date: 19/11/2009
Acceptance Date: 24/11/2009
Electronic publication date: 5/1/2010
Collection year: 2010

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Some Asian people believe that opium can protect the cardiovascular system. To assess this belief, we investigated the effect of passive opium smoking (POS) on cardiovascular indices in rabbits with ischemic and non-ischemic hearts.
Rabbits (n = 43) were divided into control (CTL), short term opium (SO) and long term opium (LO) groups. SO and LO groups were exposed to opium smoking for 3 days and 4 weeks, respectively. ECG, blood pressure (BP), left ventricular pressure and cardiac troponin I levels were recorded. Isoproterenol (ISO) was injected to induce cardiac ischemia and after 4 h the above variables were measured along with cardiac histopathology assessment.
All groups showed significant increments in troponin I level (P < 0.05) except the CTL group. This trend was more obvious in ISO-treated groups. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) significantly decreased in all groups (p< 0.05) except the LO group. Opium exposure attenuated ISO-induced myodegeneration but augmented tissue congestion and hemorrhage.
In conclusion, higher troponin I serum level and ECG changes were found in passive opium smoking groups. This evidence is against the belief that opium can protect the cardiovascular system.