From Early Smoking to COPD and other Chronic Respiratory Disease: Unraveling the Roles of Chemical Pollutants and Underlying Toxicological Mechanisms

From Early Smoking to COPD and other Chronic Respiratory Disease: Unraveling the Roles of Chemical Pollutants and Underlying Toxicological Mechanisms | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article From Early Smoking to COPD and other Chronic Respiratory Disease: Unraveling the Roles of Chemical Pollutants and Underlying Toxicological Mechanisms Rui Zhao, Huihui Zeng, Yan Chen This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8371684/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 07 Mar, 2026 Read the published version in BMC Pulmonary Medicine → Version 1 posted 11 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Despite the relationship between smoking and respiratory disorders has been well-known, the impact of early-smoking on human health and respiratory diseases remains limited. Using data of 157699 participants in UK Biobank (UKB) and 21727 participants in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we evaluated a significantly association between early smoking and human health. Early smoking participants showed a number of unfavorable healthy outcomes. The early-smoking induced to higher mortality and worse lung function. We focused on the role of pollutants in cigarette smoke during this process. We also found that early-smoking mainly influenced epithelial cell and inflammation, this process partly mediated by cadmium in cigarette smoking. The relationship between early-smoking and a series worse outcome suggests that medical personnel and whole society should pay more attention to the problem of adolescent smoking to prevent people from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other diseases. Cigarette smoking Chemical Pollutants Chronic Respiratory Disease Cadmium early smoking Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files SupplementTable.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Published Journal Publication published 07 Mar, 2026 Read the published version in BMC Pulmonary Medicine → Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 03 Feb, 2026 Reviews received at journal 01 Feb, 2026 Reviews received at journal 19 Jan, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 14 Jan, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 14 Jan, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 13 Jan, 2026 Reviewers invited by journal 12 Jan, 2026 Editor assigned by journal 29 Dec, 2025 Editor invited by journal 22 Dec, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 19 Dec, 2025 First submitted to journal 19 Dec, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. 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