Cigarette Smoking in Schizophrenic Patients
A recent study showed that cigarette smoking has a positive effect on sensor motor gating in patients with schizophrenia, improving the repulse inhibition (PPI) deficit of the startle response to levels comparable to those seen in healthy individuals.
Schizophrenics are three to four times more likely to smoke cigarettes than the general population, added researchers.
“These findings have significant implications for understanding vulnerability to tobacco dependence in schizophrenia, which may lead to the development of more effective treatments for PPI deficits and tobacco dependence in this population,” write Tony George and co-authors in the journal Schizophrenia Research.
The researchers studied PPI of the fright reply as a function of smoking status and schizophrenia diagnosis in smokers with schizophrenia, non-smokers with schizophrenia, control smokers, and control non-smokers.
At the end of the investigation researchers found that the smokers with schizophrenia had comparable levels of PPI to control smokers and non-smokers. Significantly higher levels of PPI were seen in smokers with schizophrenia than schizophrenia nonsmokers.
Researchers concluded that acute smoking to produce smoking satiation is associated with apparent normalization of PPI deficits in patients with schizophrenia.
However, a previous study demonstrated that acute smoking deprivation was associated with a reduction in PPI in schizophrenia patients, and that acute smoking improved PPI.
But according to both studies cigarette smoking has a positive effect on PPI deficits in patients with schizophrenia, and that there is selectivity to this effect since PPI was not altered in smoking versus non-smoking control patients.
The German researchers concluded: “There is firm evidence that nicotine could be used by patients with schizophrenia as a ’self-medication’ to improve deficits in attention, cognition, and information processing and to reduce side effects of antipsychotic medication”.
However research has shown that the relationship between smoking and schizophrenia is complex – it appears that there are both positive and negative effects of nicotine on a person who has schizophrenia and on the development of schizophrenia.
The research is not entirely conclusive on this topic, but generally the research supports the idea that seem to be some psychological benefits that people with schizophrenia sometimes gain by smoking, and that is why the smoking rate is much higher than in normal populations.
Tags: smoking risk
