Category: Smoking

Despite current prohibitions on the words 'light' and 'mild', smokers in Western countries continue falsely to believe that some cigarette brands may be less harmful than others. In fact, all conventional brands of cigarette present the same level of risk to smokers, including 'mild' and 'low-tar' brands.

A study published in the journal Addiction polled over 8000 smokers from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the USA. Approximately one-fifth of those smokers incorrectly believed that "some cigarette brands could be less harmful than others." False beliefs were highest among US smokers.

Current research shows that smokers base their perceptions of risk on pack colour, believing that 'silver', 'gold' and 'white' brands are less harmful to smoke than 'black' or 'red' brands. The reason for those beliefs may lie in the history of cigarette branding. Cigarettes used to carry labels like 'light', 'mild', and 'low tar', and in some places they still do. But in over fifty countries cigarette manufacturers are no longer allowed to use those labels because they are misleading. In some cases, cigarette manufacturers simply changed their 'light' cigarettes to 'silver' and 'gold' brands — for example, Marlboro Lights has become Marlboro Gold. A significant percentage of smokers now seem to equate those colours with low-risk cigarettes.

Smokers in the study also revealed false beliefs that slim cigarettes are less harmful, cigarettes with harsh taste are riskier to smoke than smooth-tasking cigarettes, filters reduce risk, and nicotine is responsible for most of the cancer caused by cigarettes.

Dr. David Hammond, one of the researchers on the study, says that the study provides evidence for further regulation. Said Hammond, "The findings highlight the deceptive potential of 'slim' cigarette brands targeted primarily at young women. The findings also support the potential benefits of plain packaging regulations that will soon take effect in Australia, under which all cigarettes will be sold in packages with the same plain colour, without graphics or logos."

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Journal Reference:

1. Seema Mutti, David Hammond, Ron Borland, Michael K. Cummings, Richard J. O'Connor, Geoffrey T. Fong. Beyond light and mild: cigarette brand descriptors and perceptions of risk in the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey. Addiction, 2011; DOI: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03402.x

Despite a growing number of cities instituting smoking bans across the country, hookah bars are cropping up everywhere — from chic downtown cafes to locations near college campuses, where they've found a loyal customer base in young adults.

A new study done by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center sheds light on the increasingly popular pastime, and the results are discouraging.

"The popularity of hookah smoking among young adults is quite alarming given the potential for negative health effects," said Erin L. Sutfin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy and lead author on the study. "Unfortunately, many young adults are misinformed about the safety of hookah smoking and some mistakenly believe it to be safer than cigarette smoking."

Little research has been done to date on hookah use by young adults in the United States, so researchers set out to expand knowledge on the activity.

They sent a web-based survey to a random sample of students from eight North Carolina colleges and universities asking about smoking patterns, drug habits, and the students' knowledge about these activities.

The researchers found that 40.3 percent — more than one-third of the students surveyed — reported having ever smoked tobacco from a hookah, while only a slightly higher percentage (46.6) reported having ever smoked a cigarette. Nearly 25 percent of students reported being current smokers of cigarettes, and 17.4 percent said they actively use hookahs.

The survey results showed that freshmen and males were more likely to use hookahs, and that there was an association between those individuals who used hookahs and those who smoked cigarettes, smoked marijuana, had a history of other illegal drug use, and had drank alcohol in the 30 days prior to the survey.

It was also clear from the results that hookah users, in general, shared a mistaken perception that somehow smoking from a hookah was less harmful than smoking a cigarette.

The full study appears online in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Originally from India, a hookah, or water pipe, is a single or multi-stemmed smoking instrument, often made of glass, consisting of a smoke chamber, a bowl, a pipe and a hose. The instrument uses charcoal to heat specially made tobacco that has been soaked in molasses or honey and is highly flavored. Most hookah cafes offer a wide variety of flavorings on their menu — everything from chocolate to bubble gum, mango to jasmine, mint to rose petals. In addition to the sweet smell and taste, the smoke produced by a hookah is "smoother" than cigarette smoke because it is cooled by water before passing through a rubber hose to a mouthpiece, where it is inhaled.

"The smoke produced by hookahs is a very mild smoke that may be appealing to non-cigarette smokers as a starter product," Sutfin said. She added that 22 percent of respondents who identified as hookah users had never tried a cigarette, suggesting that hookahs may be their first tobacco product. Cigarette smoke, by comparison, is a very harsh smoke, which can be irritating, Sutfin explained.

"Likely because of the pleasant aroma and taste, users may inhale more deeply over a longer period of time," she said. "This results in hookah smokers actually inhaling a larger volume of tobacco smoke than cigarette smokers do."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey showed that students who attended a college located within 10 miles of a hookah venue were more likely to use. This is the first study to look at "availability," or the association between the location of commercial hookah venues and use among college students in the area.

The data for this study were collected before the smoke-free ban went into effect in North Carolina, banning tobacco smoking from restaurants and bars, and there is no exemption for hookah smoking. However, Sutfin said, there are ways for hookah venues to get around the ban, such as by not serving food or alcohol and/or by serving non-tobacco, herbal products for smoking.

"Results from this study highlight the need for policies related to hookah use," Sutfin said. "First, college administrators need to be aware of hookah use and include hookahs in strong campus tobacco-free policies. Second, state smoke-free bans need to include hookahs in their policies. Several states with strong smoke-free policies have exemptions for hookahs. Hookah cafes create the perception that this is a safe activity. It is not."

One of the many health concerns about hookah cafes, Sutfin added, is that hookah pipes used in hookah bars and cafes may not be properly cleaned, creating an environment conducive to the spread of infectious diseases.

While research about hookah smoking is still emerging, evidence shows that it poses many of the same dangers that smoking cigarettes does. Among those dangers, hookah smoke contains high levels of toxic compounds, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals. In fact, smoking from a hookah exposes an individual to more carbon monoxide and smoke than cigarette smokers are exposed to. Hookah smoking also delivers about the same amount of nicotine as cigarette smoking does, which could lead to tobacco dependence. Health effects include lung cancer, respiratory illness, low birth-weight (among infants whose mothers smoked hookah during pregnancy) and periodontal disease.

"This study highlights hookah smoking as a considerable public health concern, especially among young adults," Sutfin said. "Going forward, we need to develop interventions to address this risky behavior."

Co-authors on the study, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, include Thomas P. McCoy, M.S., Beth A. Reboussin, Ph.D., Kimberly G. Wagoner, Dr.P.H., John Spangler, M.D., and Mark Wolfson, Ph.D., all of Wake Forest Baptist.

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Journal Reference:

1. Erin L. Sutfin, Thomas P. McCoy, Beth A. Reboussin, Kimberly G. Wagoner, John Spangler, Mark Wolfson. Prevalence and correlates of waterpipe tobacco smoking by college students in North Carolina. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2011.01.018

A pair of related studies on smoking cessation by researchers at the University of Oregon and other institutions have isolated the brain regions most active in controlling urges to smoke and demonstrated the effectiveness of text-messaging to measure and intervene in those urges.

Both projects used the same group of test subjects — 27 heavy smokers recruited from the American Lung Association's Freedom From Smoking program in Los Angeles.

Elliot Berkman, professor of psychology at the UO, and colleagues Emily Falk at the University of Michigan and Matthew Lieberman at UCLA, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the first study to map areas of the brain in which impulse control battles are fought. They described kicking an unwanted habit such as smoking as "a war that consists of a series of momentary self-control skirmishes."

Their paper — published online this month in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science — indicates that individuals' abilities to inhibit their responses to cravings can be predicted through fMRI testing. That means it may be possible to tailor smoking cessation programs to individuals' response-inhibition capacities.

"We are really excited about this result because it means that the brain activation we see in the scanner is predictive of real-world outcomes across a much longer time span that we thought," Berkman said. "The tasks that we use in the laboratory are simplified models of these real-world processes — but they seem to be valid models."

The second study — also by Berkman, Falk and Lieberman, along with Janna Dickenson of UCLA and posted online in advance of publication in the journal Health Psychology — tested short message service (SMS) text messaging "as a user-friendly and low-cost option for ecologically measuring real-time health behaviors." Research participants were prompted by eight text messages per day for three weeks to document their ongoing cravings, mood and cigarette use.

The research showed that text messaging is at least as effective as more expensive and harder-to-use handheld data collection devices in the "brief interval assessment" of people in smoking cessation programs. The palmtop devices typically used for what smoking cessation researchers call "ecological momentary assessment" can cost more than $300 each, while 86 percent of U.S. residents already have cell phones and 91 percent of those are SMS-enabled.

"Text messaging may be an ideal delivery mechanism for tailored interventions because it is low-cost, most people already possess the existing hardware and the messages can be delivered near-instantaneously into real world situations," said the study, which is scheduled to appear this week in Health Psychology, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

The study also confirmed earlier findings that monitoring smoking cessation participants at regular intervals — whether by text messaging or through the use of other hand-held devices — helps to eliminate "memory biases" that are common when cravings and outcomes are reported only on a daily basis. Its findings corroborate those of other studies that have indicated the importance of rapid, real-time measurement of smoking urges and resistance to them.

Text message monitoring of the Los Angeles smoking cessation participants was also a key element in the study by Berkman and his colleagues of the three brain regions that are most involved in response inhibition — the right inferior frontal gyrus, the pre-supplementary motor area and the basal ganglia.

In that study, the smokers initially were asked to perform a simple self-control task as an fMRI machine scanned their brains' activity. They were next given lung and urine tests to determine the physical extent of their tobacco addictions, and were asked about their cravings and smoking patterns. Then they began the smoking cessation program, and were asked to respond to text message prompts eight times per day for three weeks.

The study concluded that those participants who had shown the most activity in the key regions of their brains during testing were also the most likely to resist their cravings to smoke — which was documented in their text message responses.

"A big question that motivates my research is: How can we effectively use neuroimaging to learn something about long-term goals like smoking session?" Berkman said. "Using fMRI together with daily text messaging seems to be an excellent way to address that question."

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Journal References:

1. E. T. Berkman, E. B. Falk, M. D. Lieberman. In the Trenches of Real-World Self-Control: Neural Correlates of Breaking the Link Between Craving and Smoking. Psychological Science, 2011; DOI: 10.1177/0956797611400918
2. E. T. Berkman, J. Dickenson, E. B. Falk, M. D. Lieberman. Using SMS text messaging to assess moderators of smoking reduction: Validating a new tool for ecological measurement of health behaviors. Health Psychology, 2011; (in press)

People who demonstrated a stronger brain response to certain brain regions when receiving individually tailored smoking cessation messages were more likely to quit smoking four months after, a new study found.

The new University of Michigan study underscores the importance of delivering individually tailored public health messages to curb unhealthy behaviors, said principal investigator Hannah Faye Chua, who led the study as a research assistant professor at the U-M School of Public Health. It also begins to uncover the underlying neural reasons why these individually tailored messages are so much more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach, said Chua, who now works in the private sector. The study is scheduled for advance online publication Feb. 27 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Researchers have known for 15 years that tailored public health messages that account for a person's individuality work better at curbing unhealthy behaviors but until now, they haven't known why.

Chua and the research team hypothesized that portions of the brain activated during self-related processing were also engaged when people received individually tailored health messages, and that this brain activity accounted for the increased effectiveness of tailored messages.

For the study, the research group assessed 91 people who wanted to stop smoking, and based on those answers they designed an individual smoking cessation program for each subject.

Next, researchers imaged subjects' brains with MRI to see which portions responded to tailored and untailored messages about smoking cessation, and also to neutral messages. They then compared the brain response to the brain response during a self-appraisal task in which participants, still in MRI, made yes-no judgments to self-related statements such as "I am shy" or "I am athletic."

Several brain regions activated during the self-related task also appeared to activate during the tailored messages in the same group of smokers. After the scan, participants completed the full smoking intervention program that was designed for each subject.

"The bottom line is that people who are more likely to activate self-related regions of the brain during tailored message processing, particularly dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, are more likely to quit 4 months after," Chua said.

The findings have broad public health implications. "The bigger picture of this is advertisers are increasing using functional MRI to test advertising," said Vic Strecher, professor in the U-M SPH who worked on the project. "If you can imagine that people who create fast food or who sell cigarettes are doing this in an effort to convey a stronger message, we really need to better understand the ways our health messages can be more effective."

Chua stressed that researchers don't want to use functional MRI as a predictor for success of public health messages; it's simply not economically feasible. They do, however, want to better understand and eventually map the portions of the brain responsible for making decisions that will improve their health.

Some people had a stronger brain response than others to the tailored messages, Chua said, but it's not clear why. It may be that their brains are hardwired to process information differently, or that those people had a stronger desire or commitment to quitting.

"However, the desire is not just motivation, because there was no difference in motivation between quitters and non-quitters," Chua said. More than 50 percent of people quit after the four month follow-up; most smoking cessation programs range from 15 to 30 percent success. "Over 50 percent is really a successful measure," Chua said.

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Journal Reference:

1. Hannah Faye Chua, S Shaun Ho, Agnes J Jasinska, Thad A Polk, Robert C Welsh, Israel Liberzon, Victor J Strecher. Self-related neural response to tailored smoking-cessation messages predicts quitting. Nature Neuroscience, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/nn.2761

Nicotine addiction usually begins during the critical teenage years, and pediatric healthcare professionals can play a prominent role in promoting a tobacco-free lifestyle among children and adolescents, as described in an article published online ahead of print in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, & Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Denormalization is a strategy for changing social norms and reinforcing a public perception of tobacco use as a health-compromising, socially unacceptable behavior.

Karen Calabro, DrPH, Ramara Costello, and Alexander Prokhorov, MD, PhD, from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Texas), describe several ways pediatricians and other medical professionals can help their patients and their communities to see tobacco use as undesirable: through direct communication with patients and their families; by providing information and referrals for tobacco prevention and cessation programs; by setting personal examples of a tobacco-free lifestyle; and by advocating for stronger public policies aimed at reducing tobacco use and exposure.

In their article, the authors assert that healthcare professionals can have a significant, positive impact on children's health by working to denormalize tobacco use.

"For years big tobacco has promoted its toxic product as what popular, successful, glamorous, attractive, confident, athletic, and independent people do. It is time to start re-claiming the truth. Use of a product that hurts you and everyone around you is not something that should be glamorized. Implementation of strategies to change public perceptions about tobacco have had substantial impact on reducing youth smoking-and have been vigorously fought by the tobacco industry. Pediatricians, as advocates for children's health, need to send strong messages to their patients and their communities to counter the tobacco industry deceptions," says Harold Farber, MD, MSPH, Editor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, & Pulmonology, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Pulmonology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.

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Journal Reference:

1. Karen S. Calabro, Tamara C. Costello, Alexander V. Prokhorov. Denormalization of Tobacco Use and the Role of the Pediatric Health-Care Provider. Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, 2011; 110112160145069 DOI: 10.1089/ped.2010.0031

A study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers reports that electronic cigarettes are a promising tool to help smokers quit, producing six-month abstinence rates nearly double those for traditional nicotine replacement products.

In a study published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that 31 percent of respondents reported having quit smoking six months after first purchasing an electronic cigarette, a battery-powered device providing tobacco-less doses of nicotine in a vaporized solution. The average six-month abstinence rate for traditional nicotine replacement products, such as nicotine patches or gum, is between 12 and 18 percent.

"This study suggests that electronic cigarettes are helping thousands of ex-smokers remain off cigarettes," said lead author Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences.

The researchers conducted an online survey of 222 first-time purchasers of electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, from a leading electronic cigarette distributor. Of those who were not smoking at six months, 34.3 percent reported not using electronic cigarettes or any nicotine-containing products. Almost 67 percent of respondents reported having reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked after using electronic cigarettes.

The study's main limitation is the low response rate of 4.5 percent. It is possible that those who responded to the survey were more likely to have quit smoking than those who did not respond. Nevertheless, despite this limitation, the study authors believe that this is the best evidence to date on the effectiveness of electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation.

They point out that this is the first survey that relied upon an unbiased sampling frame.

Despite the limitation, the authors conclude that electronic cigarettes "hold promise as a smoking-cessation method and that they are worthy of further study using more rigorous research designs."

While more study needs to be done on the actual mechanisms of what apparently makes electronic cigarettes effective, Siegel said he believes there might be a link between the e-cigarette's physical simulation of smoking with the success of quitting.

"While it is well-recognized that nicotine plays a role in smoking addiction, little attention has been given to the behavioral aspects of the addiction," he said. "These devices simulate the smoking experience, which appears to make them effective as a smoking cessation tool."

Electronic cigarettes have proven controversial since coming onto the market more than three years ago. A number of anti-smoking groups have argued that e-cigarettes should not be sold because they have not been shown to be effective for smoking cessation, and several states — including New York — are considering banning e-cigarettes altogether.

"Banning this product would invariably result in many ex-smokers returning to cigarette smoking," Siegel said. "Removing electronic cigarettes from the market would substantially harm the public's health."

The study was co-authored by Kerry L. Tanwar and Kathleen S. Wood, also of Boston University School of Public Health.

— Brain scans showing neural reactions to pro-health messages can predict if you'll keep that resolution to quit smoking more accurately than you yourself can. That's according to a new study forthcoming in Health Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal.

"We targeted smokers who were already taking action to quit," says Emily Falk, the lead author of the study and director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and Department of Communication Studies. "And we found that neural activity can predict behavior change, above and beyond people's own assessment of how likely they are to succeed.

"These results bring us one step closer to the ability to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to select the messages that are most likely to affect behavior change both at the individual and population levels. It seems that our brain activity may provide information that introspection does not."

For the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, Falk and colleagues Matthew Lieberman, Elliot Berkman, and Danielle Whalen tested 28 heavy smokers, recruited from an anti-smoking program. Each person completed a questionnaire on their smoking history, degree of nicotine dependence, cravings, and intentions to quit. Each was also tested for exhaled carbon monoxide (CO), a measure of recent smoking.

While participants were in an fMRI scanner, the researchers showed a series of television ads designed to help people quit smoking. The ads were produced by a variety of public health agencies and foundations including the California Department of Public Health and the American Legacy Foundation. After seeing each ad, participants rated how it affected their intention to quit, whether it increased their confidence about quitting, and how much they related to the message. A month after the scan, researchers contacted participants to see how they were doing and to obtain biological verification of how much they were smoking, by assessing their CO levels. Participants reported smoking an average of 5 cigarettes a day, compared with an average of 21 a day at the start of the study, and CO levels were consistent with these self-reports. But there was considerably variability in how successful participants were in achieving the goal.

The researchers compared the smokers' behavior change from the start to the end of the study with neural activity in a particular brain region that the team's previous research had suggested is predictive of behavior change — the medial prefrontal cortex. Neural activity in this region of the brain was significantly linked to reductions in smoking behavior over the month following the scan, predicting how successful people would be in reducing their smoking. "What is exciting," Falk explained, "is that by knowing what is going on in someone's brain during the ads, we can do twice as well at predicting their future behavior, compared to if we only knew their self-reported estimate of how successful they would be, or their intention to quit."

Interestingly, many of the ads that did not seem immediately relevant to participants at the time of the scan emerged as the most highly recalled during the month that people tried to quit smoking. "It is possible that the brain activity we are observing predicts behavior change that is not predicted by people's self-reports, because it is tapping into something that people aren't consciously aware of when they initially see the ads," said Falk.

Falk is also affiliated with the U-M Department of Psychology. Co-authors include Matthew Lieberman, Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Elliot Berkman, Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and Danielle Whalen, Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where the study was conducted as part of Falk's and Berkman's doctoral dissertations, advised by Matthew Lieberman.

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a pathway in the brain that regulates an individual's vulnerability to the addictive properties of nicotine. The findings suggest a new target for anti-smoking therapies.

The study appeared January 30, 2011, in an advance, online issue of the journal Nature.

In the study, the scientists examined the effects of a part of a receptor (a protein molecule to which specific signaling molecules attach) that responds to nicotine in the brain. The scientists found that animal models with a genetic mutation inhibiting this receptor subunit consumed far more nicotine than normal. This effect could be reversed by boosting the subunit's expression.

"We believe that these new data establish a new framework for understanding the motivational drives in nicotine consumption and also the brain pathways that regulate vulnerability to tobacco addiction," said Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul Kenny, who led the study. "These findings also point to a promising target for the development of potential anti-smoking therapies."

Specifically, the new study focused on the nicotinic receptor subunit α5, in a discrete pathway of the brain called the habenulo-interpeduncular tract. The new findings suggest that nicotine activates nicotinic receptors containing this subunit in the habenula, triggering a response that acts to dampen the urge to consume more of the drug.

"It was unexpected that the habenula, and brain structures into which it projects, play such a profound role in controlling the desire to consume nicotine," said Christie Fowler, the first author of the study and research associate in the Kenny laboratory. "The habenula appears to be activated by nicotine when consumption of the drug has reached an adverse level. But if the pathway isn't functioning properly, you simply take more. Our data may explain recent human data showing that individuals with genetic variation in the α5 nicotinic receptor subunit are far more vulnerable to the addictive properties of nicotine, and far more likely to develop smoking-associated diseases such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."

A Previously Unknown Pathway Inhibits Motivation

Tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with more than five million people dying each year as a result of it, according to statistics cited in the study. Smoking is considered the cause of more than 90 percent of lung cancer deaths. Scientists have established that a tendency towards smoking can be inherited — more than 60 percent of the risk of becoming addicted to nicotine can be laid at the door of genetic factors.

Nicotine is the major addictive component of tobacco smoke, and nicotine acts in the brain by stimulating proteins called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). These nAChRs are made up of different types of subunits, one of which is the α5 subunit — the focus of the new study.

In their experiments, the Scripps Research scientists set out to determine the role of nAChRs-containing α5 subunits (α5* nAChRs) in regulating nicotine consumption.

First, the team assessed the addictive properties of nicotine in genetically altered mice lacking α5* nAChRs. The results showed that when these "knockout" mice were given access to high doses of nicotine, they consumed much larger quantities than normal mice. Next, to determine if the subunit was responsible for the sudden shift in appetite for nicotine, the scientists used a virus that "rescued" the expression of α5* nAChRs only in the medial habenula and areas of the brain into which it projects. The results showed the nicotine consumption patterns of the knockout mice returned to a normal range.

The scientists repeated the experiments with rats and produced similar results. In this case, the scientists used a virus to "knock out" α5 nAChR subunits in the medial habenula. When the α5* nAChRs were decreased, the animals were more aggressive in seeking higher doses of nicotine. When the subunit remained unaltered, the animals showed more restraint.

The scientists then worked out the biochemical mechanisms through which α5* nAChRs operate in the medial habenula to control the addictive properties of nicotine. They found that α5* nAChRs regulate just how responsive the habenula is to nicotine, and that the habenula is involved in some of the negative responses to nicotine consumption. So when α5* nAChRs do not function properly, the habenula is less responsive to nicotine and much more of the drug can be consumed without negative feedback from the brain.

The scientists are optimistic that their findings may one day lead to help for smokers who want to kick the habit. Based on the new findings, the Scripps Florida scientists have started a new program of research in collaboration with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania to develop new drugs to boost α5* nAChR signaling and decrease the addictive properties of nicotine.

In addition to Kenny and Fowler, authors of the paper, "Habenular α5* Nicotinic Receptor Signaling Regulates Nicotine Intake," include Qun Lu and Paul M. Johnson of Scripps Research and Michael J. Marks of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and The James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program, Florida Department of Health.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christie D. Fowler, Qun Lu, Paul M. Johnson, Michael J. Marks, Paul J. Kenny. Habenular α5 nicotinic receptor subunit signalling controls nicotine intake. Nature, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/nature09797

A European research group has studied how smoking habits are transmitted within the home. The results show that, in homes where both parents are present, there is a significant degree of inter-generational transmission of smoking habits between parents and children, particularly between individuals of the same gender.

"Fathers transmit their smoking habits to a statistically significant level to their sons, and the same is true of mothers and daughters. However, if a mother smokes it does not seem to impact on the probability of her son smoking, and similarly a father that smokes does not affect his daughter," Loureiro, a researcher at the USC and co-author of the study, said.

The research, which has been published in the journal Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, is based on information from the British Household Panel Survey 1994-2002. "We selected this data source because it gives detailed information on the products consumed in households, including tobacco, making it possible to analyse the transmission of smoking habits between generations," the experts explain.

The study was carried out in homes where both parents were present as well as in single parent households, which were primarily headed by mothers.

"The results obtained show that, in terms of smoking habits, after taking socio-economic variables into account, daughters tend to imitate their mothers, while sons imitate their mothers," says Loureiro.

The estimated probabilities of a son smoking if both parents smoke is 24%, but this falls to almost 12% if neither of the parents smokes. For daughters, the probability of smoking if both parents smoke is 23%, also falling to 12% if neither of the parents smokes.

In single-parent households, mothers transmit their smoking habits to their children — regardless of their gender. In this case, a son's likelihood of smoking if the mother smokes is 32%, and 28% for a daughter.

"These results have clear importance in terms of designing public policies to combat smoking. Policies that are successful in reducing smoking habits among parents will also affect their children. Anti-smoking policies for young people need to be put in place that will also include the family and social context in which they live," explains Loureiro.

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Journal Reference:

1. Maria L. Loureiro, Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano, Daniela Vuri. Smoking Habits: Like Father, Like Son, Like Mother, Like Daughter?*. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2010; 72 (6): 717 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0084.2010.00603.x

Seeing actors smoke in a movie activated the brain areas of smokers that are known to interpret and plan hand movements, as though they too were about to light a cigarette, according to a new study in the Jan. 19 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Habitual smokers repeat the same hand motions, sometimes dozens of times a day. In this study, researchers led by senior investigator Todd Heatherton, PhD, and graduate student Dylan Wagner of Dartmouth College set out to determine whether the parts of the brain that control that routine gesture could be triggered by simply seeing someone else smoke.

The authors found that seeing this familiar action — even when embedded in a Hollywood movie — evoked the same brain responses as planning to actually make that movement. These results may provide additional insight for people trying to overcome nicotine addiction, a condition that leads to one in five U.S. deaths each year.

"Our findings support prior studies that show smokers who exit a movie that had images of smoking are more likely to crave a cigarette, compared with ones who watched a movie without them," Wagner said. "More work is needed to show whether brain activity in response to movie smoking predicts relapse for a smoker trying to quit."

During the study, 17 smokers and 17 non-smokers watched the first 30 minutes of the movie "Matchstick Men" while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers chose the movie because it prominently features smoking scenes but otherwise lacks alcohol use, violence, and sexual content.

The volunteers were unaware that the study was about smoking. When they viewed smoking scenes, smokers showed greater brain activity in a part of the parietal lobe called the intraparietal sulcus, as well as other areas involved in the perception and coordination of actions. In the smokers' brains specifically, the activity corresponded to the hand they use to smoke.

"Smokers trying to quit are frequently advised to avoid other smokers and remove smoking paraphernalia from their homes, but they might not think to avoid a movie with smoking content," Wagner said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that exposure to onscreen smoking in movies makes adolescents more likely to smoke. According to their 2010 report, tobacco use in films has decreased in recent years, but about half of popular movies still contained tobacco imagery in 2009, including 54 percent of those rated PG-13.

Scott Huettel, PhD, of Duke University, an expert in the neuroscience of decision-making who was unaffiliated with the study, said scientists have long known that visual cues often induce drug cravings. "This finding builds upon the growing body of evidence that addiction may be reinforced not just by drugs themselves, but by images and other experiences associated with those drugs," Huettel said.

The research was supported by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Journal Reference:

1. D. D. Wagner, S. Dal Cin, J. D. Sargent, W. M. Kelley, T. F. Heatherton. Spontaneous Action Representation in Smokers when Watching Movie Characters Smoke. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; 31 (3): 894 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5174-10.2011