Bacteriology of the nose, nasopharynx and oropharynx of the smokers

Smoking can cause oropharyngeal mucosa to trans~orm to squamous type o~ cell. This is in turn a~~ect the ~unction o~mucociliary blanket and hence a~~ect the composition o~normal ~lora. The aim o~ our work was to asses as ~ar aspossible the magnitude o~ changes o~ the normal ~lora o~ thenose, nasopharynx and oropharynx o~ the smokers.Our work comprised 100 healthy subjects were classi~iedinto ~our groups: (1) 25 heavy smoker subjects~ they smokedfrom 20-40 cigarette per day, (2) 2519ht smoker subjects,they smoked up to 10 cigarette per day, (3) 25 passive smokersubjects (were obliged inhalation o~ill-ventilated places e.g. work placestobaccoand (4)smoke atnon-smoket-~bjects, they never smoked tobacco or other substances and~re chosen ~rom places in which smoking were prohibited likehospital s.In our work 3 swabs were obtained ~rom each subjectsnasal swab, nasophat-yngeal swab and ot-ophat-yngeal swab. Theobtained swabs were inculated on the ~ollowingmedia,ootrient agar, blood agar, chocolate agar and sabauraud agarplates. The isolated colonies wet-e subcultLwed and ~urthet-i~nti~ied by the ~ollowing : colony morphology,Gt-am-stainoxidase test, sugar ~ermentaton test,coagulase test,solubility test,serot yp i ng .inuline test,Bacitracin discs and75