Potential Disruption of Systemic Hormone Transport by Tobacco Alkaloids Using Computational Approaches

Tobacco/nicotine is one of the most toxic and addictive substances and continues to pose a significant threat to global public health. The harmful effects of smoking/nicotine affect every system in the human body. Nicotine has been associated with effects on endocrine homeostasis in humans such as the imbalance of gonadal steroid hormones, adrenal corticosteroid hormones, and thyroid hormones. The present study was conducted to characterize the structural binding interactions of nicotine and its three important metabolites, cotinine, trans-3'-hydroxycotinine, and 5'-hydroxycotinine, against circulatory hormone carrier proteins, i.e., sex-hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), corticosteroid-binding globulin (CBG), and thyroxine-binding globulin (TBG). Nicotine and its metabolites formed nonbonded contacts and/or hydrogen bonds with amino acid residues of the carrier proteins. For SHBG, Phe-67 and Met-139 were the most important amino acid residues for nicotine ligand binding showing the maximum number of interactions and maximum loss in ASA. For CBG, Trp-371 and Asn-264 were the most important amino acid residues, and for TBG, Ser-23, Leu-269, Lys-270, Asn-273, and Arg-381 were the most important amino acid residues. Most of the amino acid residues of carrier proteins interacting with nicotine ligands showed a commonality with the interacting residues for the native ligands of the proteins. Taken together, the results suggested that nicotine and its three metabolites competed with native ligands for binding to their carrier proteins. Thus, nicotine and its three metabolites may potentially interfere with the binding of testosterone, estradiol, cortisol, progesterone, thyroxine, and triiodothyronine to their carrier proteins and result in the disbalance of their transport and homeostasis in the blood circulation.