The effect of cigarette smoking on cervical langerhans cells and T and B lymphocytes in normal uterine cervix epithelium.

The objective of our study was to evaluate the effect of smoking on intraepithelial Langerhans cells and T and B lymphocytes in normal cervical epithelium. A total of 47 women who underwent hysterectomies because of uterine leiomyomata were investigated. Thirty-two individuals were nonsmokers and 15 were current smokers. A segment of tissue was taken from the cervix after the removal of the uterus and was formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded for histologic analysis. The identification of the Langerhans cells and T and B lymphocytes was carried out by immunohistochemical analysis. The number of intraepithelial Langerhans cells was expressed by the amount of cells per square millimeter of epithelium. For T and B lymphocytes, a score expressed the cell count. The comparison of the number of intraepithelial Langerhans cells between smoking and nonsmoking women showed a significant difference (P=0.045), but it did not occur in relation to the number of T and B cells between the 2 groups. There was also no significant difference in relation to the number of cigarettes smoked per day, time of consumption, and total amount of cigarettes smoked throughout the lifetime. It was shown that smoking reduces the number of intraepithelial Langerhans cells in a normal cervix but does not influence the number of T and B lymphocytes.