Smoking and Diabetes Attenuate Number of CD34⁺ Haematopoietic Stem Cells in Peripheral Blood of Patients with Advanced Peripheral Artery Disease

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a globally prevalent problem with limited treatment options, leaving up to a fifth of patients remediless. The emergence of new studies on cell therapy in recent years offers a new promising option for their treatment. Our aim was to explore how the number of CD34⁺ hematopoietic cells in the peripheral blood of PAD patients is associated with patients' functional as well as atherogenic factors. We selected 30 patients with advanced PAD, recorded their performance in a walking test in standard conditions and sampled their blood for further analysis with an emphasis on CD34⁺ cell selection and counting. No correlation of the CD34⁺ cell number was confirmed with any of the observed laboratory parameters. There was an association between the claudication distance and the number of CD34⁺ cells (r = -0.403, p = 0.046). The number of CD34⁺ cells differed between patients with and without type II diabetes (p = 0.071) and between active smokers, past smokers, and non-smokers (p = 0.035; p = 0.068, p = 0.051, respectively), with both smoking and presence of diabetes type II having a negative effect on the number of CD34⁺ cells. Our study demonstrated a dependence of the CD34⁺ cell number on the patient's characteristics.