Cardiovascular effects of smoking cigarettes with different nicotine deliveries. A study using multilead plethysmography.

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the impact of smoking cigarettes with different nicotine deliveries on the subcutaneous blood vessels at different sites of the body. Individual puffing behavior, estimated mouth intake of nicotine, and some personality traits were taken into account. Each of 15 female smokers was presented with four different smoking conditions in order to vary the nicotine uptake. Heart rate and five photoplethysmographic recordings were taken simultaneously and continuously. The heart rate increases were dependent on the individual mouth intake of nicotine. The smoking-induced decreases in the pulse amplitudes failed to show a significant dependency on the nicotine dose. However, the vasoconstrictive response to nicotine was considerable with the finger recordings, modest with the foot recordings, and absent with the forehead and the ear recordings. Furthermore, the magnitude of this vascular response at the finger correlated positively with personality traits of neuroticism, suggesting an explanation for the poor correlations with the dose of nicotine.