Influence of smoking on serum lipid and lipoprotein levels among family medicine patients.

Smoking causes decrease of HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and increase of total cholesterol, triglyceride and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) levels. Low HDL-C levels and high cholesterol and LDL-C levels are associated with a higher risk for cardiovascular diseases. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of smoking status on serum lipid and lipoproteins levels among patients in family medicine practice. This trial was designed to detect differences in serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL-C and HDL-C levels between smokers and non-smokers. We had placed a limit of 300 patients for data collection. We excluded 195 patients who met excluding criteria (diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, renal and hepatic failure, hypothyroidism; using beta blockers, thiazide diuretics, hormonal replacement therapy and corticosteroids; more than light physical activity; alcohol consumption and obesity), so the sample size included 105 randomly selected patients from Family Medicine Teaching Center Tuzla, mean age 52.05 +/- 11.61 years. Main outcomes were smoking status in all participants and serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL-C and HDL-C levels in smokers and non-smokers. Our results showed that smoking prevalence was 49.52%. Smokers had significantly higher serum total cholesterol (P=0.01), triglyceride (P=0.002) and LDL-C level (P=0.03) and significantly lower HDL-C level (P=0.003) comparing with nonsmokers. There was no significant difference in serum lipid and lipoprotein levels between ex-smokers and never smokers. These results suggest that cigarette smoking adversely affects serum lipid and lipoprotein levels which further increases the risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.