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Nicotine Shown To Reduce Symptoms of Schizophrenia (newatlas.com)
New submitter future guy quotes a report from New Atlas: A meta-analysis of worldwide studies conducted in 2005 definitively showed what many doctors had been anecdotally noting for decades. Schizophrenia patients were much more likely to become heavy smokers than than those in the general population. In fact some studies found over 80 percent of those diagnosed with schizophrenia were smokers. There were many social and psychological hypotheses proposed to explain this strange anomaly, but none were ever sufficient. A new study published in Nature Medicine has not only revealed how smoking can normalize the impairments in brain activity associated with schizophrenia, but unlocks an entirely new field of drug research to combat the disease. The study expanded on the recent discovery of a genetic mutation, labelled CHRNA5, that was identified as being associated with the cognitive impairments seen in schizophrenic patients. The scientists took mice with the CHRNA5 gene variant and discovered they displayed similar characteristics to those suffering from schizophrenia, such as an inability to suppress a startle response and an aversion to social interaction. Using brain imaging technologies the research team discovered the mice with the CHRNA5 gene variant displayed symptoms of hypofrontality, a state of decreased blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Hypofrontality is commonly thought to be a prominent cause of many symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as being associated with other psychiatric conditions including Bipolar Disorder and ADHD. As well as identifying the role this gene variant plays in causing hypofrontality, the study examined how nicotine acted to restore normal activity to the prefrontal cortex. The researchers found that within one week of daily nicotine dosing the impaired brain activity in mice with schizophrenic characteristics had normalized.
No wonder I'm the only sane person in my family. Everyone else smokes.
In the Western World there is a moral imperative to denounce cigarets, alcohol, drugs and anything that smacks of fun.
Go talk to some smokers. Very few consider cigarettes to be "fun". 90% of smokers started before they were 18. The tobacco industry depends on getting children addicted before they have the maturity to make a rational decision. They deserve to be denounced, and we have a moral imperative to do so.
About 3.5 million Americans are schizophrenic, about 1% of the population. It is a major root cause of homelessness, addiction, suicide, and many other social problems. Yet we consider it funny to ridicule them in ways that would not be acceptable for other disabilities. Why is that?
Cigarettes should be denounced, but not nicotine.
It's amazing to me how often the bad effects of smoking get attributed to nicotine itself.
Bleh, kissing a smoker. Been there, done that, no desire for a repeat.
Go talk to some smokers. Very few consider cigarettes to be "fun". 90% of smokers started before they were 18. The tobacco industry depends on getting children addicted before they have the maturity to make a rational decision. They deserve to be denounced, and we have a moral imperative to do so.
I started smoking in a ex-communist country with no such thing as advertisement or even a tobacco industry. We started smoking because we saw adults that we looked up to doing it. The fact that it was considered "for grownups only" made it even more enticing, after all childhood is simply the process of learning how to act and graduating to adulthood. Vices like smoking were seen as a sort of a right of passage by the the younger generations, I can't image it is all that different in the rest of the world
Indeed. Suicide, accidents and overdoses have been shown to be very effective at reducing lung cancer rates!
I suspect it's nicotine withdrawal that exacerbates the symptoms of schizophrenia, not nicotine use reducing the symptoms. They're just maintaining their addiction.