Researchers found that second hand smoke can result in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a rising cause of chronic liver injury which leads to liver dysfunction in people who drink little or no alcohol.

The study emphasized that stopping cigarette smoking helps prevent not only cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease and cancer, but now also liver disease.

Second-hand smoke is the combination of smoke exhaled by a smoker and smoke given off by the burning end of a tobacco product. Lingering in the air long after tobacco products have been extinguished, it is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers in the vicinity.

Second-hand smoke is a major toxicant that affects children, the elderly and nonsmokers living in the household of adults who smoke. Many state and local governments have passed laws prohibiting smoking in public facilities. Diseases associated with second-hand smoking include cancer, heart disease, atherosclerosis, pneumonia, bronchitis and severe asthma.

Despite the large body of scientific evidence documenting the effects of passive or active smoking on the heart and lungs, reports investigating how smoking causes liver injury are rare.

"Our study provides compelling experimental evidence in support of tobacco smoke exposure playing a major role in NAFLD development," said Manuela Martins-Green, a professor of cell biology at the University of California, Riverside, who led the study.

Results of the study appear in the September issue of the Journal of Hepatology.

A grant to Martins-Green from Philip Morris USA, Inc., supported the research.

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