Does cigarette smoking acutely increase platelet thrombus formation in patients with coronary artery disease taking aspirin?
Cigarette smoking acutely increases platelet thrombus formation in CAD patients despite aspirin therapy, highlighting a mechanism for acute coronary events in smokers.
These results suggest that smoking-enhanced platelet thrombosis may be an important contributory mechanism for acute coronary events in smokers that is not prevented by aspirin treatment. Catecholamine release and heightened platelet aggregation response to in vivo agonists may contribute to the prothrombotic effects of smoking.
Hung et al. (Wed,) studied this question.