http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/category/mental.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/06/smoking-brains-men-idUSL5E8D61AA20120206 http://tobacco.org/news/333466.html Men who smoke suffer a more rapid decline in brain function as they age than their non-smoking counterparts, with their cognitive decline as rapid as someone 10 years older but who shuns tobacco, scientists said on Monday. In a large, long-term study, British researchers found that while there seems to be no link between cognitive decline and smoking in women, in men, the habit is linked to swifter decline, with early dementia-like cognitive difficulties showing up as early as the age of 45. The research adds to an already large body of evidence about the long-term dangers of smoking -- a habit the World Health Organisation refers to as "one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced". Smoking causes lung cancer, which is often fatal, and other chronic respiratory diseases. It is also a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, the world's number one killers. Reuters UK Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=661445 http://tobacco.org/news/333453.html Smoking appears to speed declines in memory, thinking, learning and processing information in men, but not in women, new research suggests. One expert said the findings are just one more reason to quit the habit. "This study underscores that smoking is bad for your brain, and that mid-life smoking is a modifiable risk factor with an effect size roughly equivalent to 10 years of aging on the rate of [mental] decline," said Dr. Marc Gordon, chief of neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. He was not involved with the research. The new study was led by Severine Sabia of University College London. She and her colleagues analyzed data collected from nearly 5,100 men and more than 2,100 women who had three assessments of mental functions such as memory, learning and thought-processing over 10 years and six assessments of smoking status over 25 years. The participants were an average of 56 years old at the time of their first assessment. HealthDay [HealthScout] UK Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/07/smoking-may-lead-to-faster-cognitive-decline-in-men/ http://tobacco.org/news/333431.html the latest study shows that smoking is associated with cognitive decline as early as age 45, and that male smokers may be more vulnerable to these mental effects than women. For the study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers led by Severine Sabia, a research associate in the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London, gave cognitive tests to 7,236 middle aged men and women three times between 1997-99 and 2007-09, when they were 44-69 years old, 50-74 years old and 55-80 years old. The researchers also collected the participants’ 20-year smoking history through regular self-reported questionnaires. And when they compared the cognitive scores to smoking status, they found that men who smoked showed faster decline than nonsmoking men over 10 years.The size of the effect associated with smoking was similar to that of 10 years of aging. Even after Sabia and her colleagues adjusted for the effects of heart disease, stroke and lung function on mental abilities, the effect of smoking remained strong. The more men smoked, the greater their decline. What’s more, the study showed for the first time that the smoking-related cognitive declines may begin as early as age 45. TIME Magazine UK Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/archgenpsychiatry.2011.2016 http://tobacco.org/news/333401.html Conclusions Compared with never smokers, middle-aged male smokers experienced faster cognitive decline in global cognition and executive function. In ex-smokers with at least a 10-year cessation, there were no adverse effects on cognitive decline. Archives of General Psychiatry UK Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-smoking-men-cognitive-impairment-20120206,0,1054166.story?track=rss http://tobacco.org/news/333400.html Middle-aged men who smoke suffered more rapid cognitive decline than peers who have never smoked or who have been ex-smokers for at least 10 years, researchers reported Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Smoking is known to be a risk factor for dementia in the aged, but the extent to which it is a risk factor for cognitive problems earlier in life is less-well understood, wrote the team. Led by Severine Sabia of University College London's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, the researchers looked at data collected from 5,099 men and 2,137 women. The subjects were employees of the British Civil Service who had participated in the Whitehall II study, which launched in 1985 and which conducted its ninth phase from 2007 to 2009. Los Angeles Times health@latimes.com (Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog) UK Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Smoking-is-bad-for-mens-brains-20120206 http://tobacco.org/news/333395.html Men who smoke experience greater mental declines over time than men who never smoked, but the same link does not appear among women, said a British study published in the United States on Monday. The research suggested that the effects of long-term cigarette smoking show up terms of memory loss, inability to connect past experience with actions in the present, and a drop in overall cognition skills. The study in the Archives of General Psychiatry followed more than 5 000 men and 2 100 women in the British civil service. Research subjects entered the study at an average age of 56 and were followed for up to 25 years. Researchers at the University College London checked their smoking status six times over that span and ran a series of cognitive tests. They found that smoking was linked to more rapid declines in mental ability across all cognitive tests among men who smoked when compared to non-smoking men. Agence France Presse UK Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=660767 http://tobacco.org/news/333358.html Children born to women who smoke during pregnancy are not at increased risk for autism, according to a new study. Smoking during pregnancy has been considered a possible cause of autism in children due to known links between smoking and behavioral disorders and obstetric complications, but previous studies of a connection between smoking during pregnancy and autism have had mixed results. In this study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 4,000 Swedish children with autism and a control group of 39,000 children without autism. The results showed that 19.8 percent of the children in the autism group and 18.4 percent of those in the control group had mothers who smoked during pregnancy. The study was published online in December in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders and will appear in a upcoming print issue. HealthDay [HealthScout] Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dirty-minds/201202/if-you-needed-another-reason-quit http://tobacco.org/news/333300.html A few months ago, I attended Neuroscience 2011, the largest neuroscience conference in the world. Imagine 30,000+ scientists exiting the lab, squinting at the daylight and coming together to share the latest and greatest findings in the neuroscience world. . . . One of the studies I wrote up after the conference was a landmark study demonstrating the molecular mechanisms of nicotine as a gateway drug. The long and the short was that researchers at Columbia University found that nicotine, when taken along with cocaine, increases the risk of addiction. And it showed how it did so very elegantly at both the cellular and epigenetic levels. Translation: nicotine changed the way animals learned, priming them for addiction. And it did so by changing the way an animal's genes were expressed. . . . Nora Volkow, the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, hailed the study as "transformative." And when we spoke about it during Neuroscience 2011, she mentioned that it may reach much further than just cocaine addiction—if nicotine can make these kinds of epigenetic changes, literally changing the way genes are expressed, it could mean that it also has influence over many other diseases and disorders. "This a previously unknown pharmacological effect of nicotine," she said. "And the implications...there are many potential implications. We give nicotine patches to help pregnant women stop smoking. But if it works this way on the genes, then maybe we should not be giving them those patches." Then the conjecture started. . . . If nicotine can act on all these genes, I can see it potentially playing a role in anorexia and depression—perhaps even exacerbating diseases like schizophrenia or Parkinson's disease. I told Volkow that all these questions were going to keep me up at night for a while. "This is the difference between good science and not-so-good science. Good science makes you think," she said. "This paper raises a lot of questions that are extremely interesting. And we need to see them through." Psychology Today Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.independent.ie/national-news/stricter-smoking-rules-after-fire-death-in-home-3009203.html http://tobacco.org/news/333193.html THE death of a man with intellectual problems who accidentally set himself on fire will mean new safety procedures are introduced to hospitals and care facilities. Percy Ryan (68) died 16 days after he accidentally set his trousers alight. He was in a special smoking hut in a Health Service Executive-run care facility in Limerick at the time. Mr Ryan, who had only been in the home for seven months, died after he sustained serious burns to 30pc of his body. Immediately after nurses used a fire extinguisher, wet towels and basins of water to put out his blazing trousers, he told them: "I will never smoke again." Irish Independent Ireland Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Judge-orders-mental-evaluation-for-combative-air-2963383.php http://tobacco.org/news/333192.html At the request of his own lawyer, a Miami man accused of disrupting a flight and forcing it to make an unscheduled stop in San Antonio has been ordered to be examined by a psychiatrist. U.S. Magistrate Judge Pamela Mathy this week approved the request from assistant federal public defender R. Clark Adams. His client, Manolin Jesus Villaverde, “may be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent” to understand the proceedings against him “or to assist properly in his defense,” Adams said in a court motion. FBI agents said they arrested Villaverde, 37, last week after he became combative when told to put out cigarettes on a Continental Airlines flight San Antonio Express-News gcontreras@express-news.net ( Guillermo Contrera, Express-News ) Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_121206.html http://tobacco.org/news/332664.html Checking for clogged arteries doesn't help inveterate smokers kick the habit if they are already in a quit-smoking program, Swiss researchers have found. Yet that's sometimes the justification when doctors recommend the expensive scan, called carotid plaque screening, which experts say has no proven benefits in people without symptoms of heart disease. "When people get a very good smoking cessation program, carotid plaque screening does not add anything," Dr. Nicolas Rodondi, who led the new study, told Reuters Health. Some previous research had suggested that showing people dire pictures of cholesterol buildup, or plaque, in their arteries might be the stick they need to make healthy changes to their lifestyle. But at least for smokers, the new study slashes those hopes. "It proves that in trying to motivate smokers to quit, this strategy is not going to be useful," said Dr. Patrick O'Malley of the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland, who wrote an editorial about the findings. . . . The new study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is based on more than 500 long-time smokers aged 40 to 70 who all wanted to quit and had no symptoms of heart disease. All of them had six sessions of counseling over a year, plus a phone call, nicotine patches and brochures on smoking cessation. In addition, half were randomly chosen to be screened for carotid plaque, which most turned out to have. Although smoking contributes to plaque, which is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke, the ultrasound pictures didn't seem to have any effect. . . . "Smokers are a different breed, they tend to have a different psychological profile," said O'Malley. "They are more recalcitrant." Reuters Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/01/22/Dual-smokers-have-different-profile/UPI-47741327285089/ http://tobacco.org/news/332505.html Dual smokers -- people who smoke cigarettes and cigars -- fit a different profile than cigarette-only smokers, a U.S. public health organization says. Legacy, a public health organization dedicated to helping people quit smoking or never start, showed adult smokers who indicated they use both cigarettes and cigars -- 12.5 percent -- were more likely to be young, African-American, male, of low educational attainment and unemployed compared with cigarette-only smokers. "While this data is disturbing, it is not surprising," Amanda Richardson, director for research and evaluation at Legacy, said in a statement. "Previous research has shown that cigars and cigarillos are already on the rise among young adults, especially as lower prices and sweet flavors may add to their appeal. In addition, minority and underserved populations that are most at-risk for dual use are those same populations that often bear a disproportionate brunt of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality." . . . The study was published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research. UPI Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2011-12/21/content_14299597.htm http://tobacco.org/news/332401.html Children whose fathers smoked around the time of their conception have at least a 15 percent higher risk of developing the most common form of childhood cancer, a type of leukemia, according to an Australian study. Although the findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, credit multiple factors in children developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the study follows others that have also found an increased risk. "Study results suggest that heavier paternal smoking around the time of conception is a risk factor for childhood ALL," write researchers led by Elizabeth Milne at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Australia. China Daily Australia Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871611003814 http://tobacco.org/news/332229.html Objective Ten early onset problem behaviors were used to prospectively predict alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine disorders in young adulthood (mean age = 28.6 yrs) for a U.S. community sample of 671 participants. . . . . Results Findings supported the specificity hypothesis in that "like" early onset problem behaviors significantly predicted "like" young adult outcomes (e.g., early cocaine use predicted cocaine disorders). Furthermore, eliminating such "like" predictors in regression equations resulted in a 36% reduction in the amount of variance accounted for by the equation. The generality hypothesis was also supported in that a larger number of early onset problem behaviors strengthened the prediction of young adult disorders beyond the "like" attribute, and a dose-response pattern indicated that additional early onset problem behaviors increased the probable occurrence of a young adult disorder. Conclusions A comprehensive framework relating early onset problem behaviors to young adult substance disorders will require the integration of both generality and specificity hypotheses, and a developmental orientation focused on the unfolding of mediating and moderating processes. Early screening of multiple, rather than single, early onset problems is also discussed. Science Direct mwindle@emory.edu Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871611003553 http://tobacco.org/news/332228.html both problem gamblers and heavy smokers showed hyporesponsiveness of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex compared to healthy controls, during successful as well as failed response inhibition. These effects were robust against adjustments for depression and adult attention deficit scores. Conclusions These findings suggest that hypoactivation of the inhibition circuit is a shared neural mechanism in substance use disorders and behavioral addictions. As such, they support the reclassification of pathological gambling as a behavioral addiction in DSM-V. Science Direct m.b.deruiter@amc.uva.nl Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT