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Hindawi Publishing Corporation Mediators of Inflammation Volume 2009, Article ID 812102, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2009/812102 Clinical Study Maintained Smoking Cessation for 6 Months Equilibrates the Percentage of Sputum CD8+ Lymphocyte Cells with That of Nonsmokers Izolde Bouloukaki,1 Maria Tsoumakidou,1 Constantine I. Vardavas,2 Ioanna Mitrouska,1 Eleni Koutala,1 Nikolaos M. Siafakas,1 Sophia E. Schiza,1 and Nikos Tzanakis1, 2 1 Department of Thoracic Medicine, University General Hospital, Medical School of the University of Crete, 71110 Heraklion, Greece 2 Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine, Medical School of the University of Crete, 71110 Heraklion, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Izolde Bouloukaki, izolthi@ Received 31 July 2009; Revised 5 November 2009; Accepted 30 November 2009 Recommended by Alex Kleinjan Little is known about the longitudinal effects of smoking cessation on sputum inflammatory cells. We aimed to investigate into changes in sputum inflammatory cells and T-lymphocyte subpopulations after 6 and 12 months smoking cessation. Induced sputum was obtained from 68 healthy smokers before and after 6 months (n = 21) and 1 year (n = 14) smoking cessation and from ten healthy never-smokers. Inflammatory cells were identified by morphology and T-lymphocyte subpopulations by flow cytometry. Sputum macrophages were decreased after 12 months of smoking cessation in comparison to baseline, while neutrophils increased. Moreover, CD8+ T-cells were decreased in smokers before smoking cessation compared to never-smokers and increased in smokers after 6 months of smoking cessation in comparison to baseline, result that was maintained after 1 year of smoking cessation. These novel findings indicate that smoking cessa