Apoptotic and Autophagic modulation by nicotine

Cigarette smoking is growing and nicotine is considered as the most adverse agent in the cigarette smoking. Nicotine is an alkaloid and forms 90% of alkaloids of cigarette. Nicotine is accountable for creating disorders and cancers such as lung cancer, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Nicotine can be considered as an autophagy and apoptosis inducer which can either directly or indirectly stimulate apoptosis and autophagy. Apoptosis is the programmed cell death and oxidative stress in the most known inducer of apoptosis. However, physicochemical stresses, free radicals and removing of nutrients are other factors which induce apoptosis. Autophagy plays the role of recycling which mainly attacks damaged and aged cells and organelles. In this review, we investigate the effect of nicotine on these pathways.