Radiaoctivity in Cigarette
Turkish Journal of nuclear Sciences Volume 25 no:2 pp 1998
ibrahim Uslu, E. Tanker, M.L. Aksu
Cigarette is known to be hazardous to health due to nicotine and tar it contains. This is indicated on cigarette... more Cigarette is known to be hazardous to health due to nicotine and tar it contains. This is indicated on cigarette packets by health warnings. However there is less known hazard of smoking due to intake of radioactive compounds by inhalation. This study dwells upon the radioactive hazard of smoking.
Download (.pdf) The regulation of nicotine the UK: how nicotine gum came to be a medicine but not a drug
with Emilie Cloatre and Robert Dingwall. (2012) Journal of Law and Society, 39(1): 39-57.
This article explores the utility of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a tool for socio-legal research. ANT is deployed in... more This article explores the utility of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a tool for socio-legal research. ANT is deployed in a study of the evolution of divided regulatory responsibility for tobacco and medicinal nicotine (MN) products in the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on how the latter came to be regulated as a medicine. We examine the regulatory decisions taken in the United Kingdom in respect of the first MN product: a nicotine-containing gum developed in Sweden, which became available in the United Kingdom in 1980 as a prescription-only medicine under the Medicines Act 1968. We propose that utilizing ANT to explore the development of nicotine gum and the regulatory decisions taken about it places these decisions into the wider context of ideas about tobacco control and addiction, and helps us to understand better how different material actors acted in different networks leading to very different systems of regulation.
A survey of the prevalence of smoking and smoking cessation advice received by inpatients in a large teaching hospital in Ireland
by Frank Doyle
Bartels C, Abuhaliga ARY et al.
DOI 10.1007/s11845-011-0792-3
BACKGROUND:
The adverse effects of smoking are well documented and it is crucial that this modifiable risk... more
BACKGROUND:
The adverse effects of smoking are well documented and it is crucial that this modifiable risk factor is addressed routinely. Professional advice can be effective at reducing smoking amongst patients, yet it is not clear if all hospital in-patient smokers receive advice to quit.
AIMS:
To explore smoking prevalence amongst hospital in-patients and smoking cessation advice given by health professionals in a large university teaching hospital.
METHODS:
Interviews were carried out over 2 weeks in February 2011 with all eligible in-patients in Beaumont Hospital.
RESULTS:
Of the 205 patients who completed the survey, 61% stated they had been asked about smoking by a healthcare professional in the past year. Only 44% of current/recent smokers stated they had received smoking cessation advice from a health professional within the same timeframe.
CONCLUSIONS:
Interventions to increase rates of healthcare professional-provided smoking cessation advice are urgently needed.
Treatment for tobacco dependence: a potential application for stratified medicine?
Alistair J Brock, Andrea Takeda, Caroline Brennan & Robert T Walton. Personalized Medicine. 2011; 8(5):571–579.
Tobacco addiction is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide and places a heavy social and financial burden on... more Tobacco addiction is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide and places a heavy social and financial burden on society. Therefore, ways of helping people to overcome nicotine dependence are a key element of strategies aimed at improving public health. Current treatments are only partially effective and there is a need to develop more efficient approaches to help smokers to stop. There exists a substantial genetic variability in smoking behavior and the likelihood of cessation – tailoring treatment according to an individual’s genetic profile is now technologically feasible and could lead to more successful cessation attempts. Here we review studies of the genetic effects on smoking cessation in randomized controlled trials of pharmacological therapy and discuss the potential value of a personalized approach to help people stop smoking.
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Nicotine Improves Memory for Delayed Intentions. Psychopharmacology.
Rusted, Trawley, Heath, Kettle and Walker (2005). Nicotine Improves Memory for Delayed Intentions. Psychopharmacology. Nov 182 (3): 355-65
Rationale
The present paper asked first whether the cholinergic agonist nicotine improves memory for delayed... more
Rationale
The present paper asked first whether the cholinergic agonist nicotine improves memory for delayed intentions (prospective memory, ProM) and second whether pharmacological dissociation would support the psychological distinction that is made between strategic (effortful) and automatic (non-effortful) intention activation in prospective memory.
Objectives
To use nicotine as a pharmacological tool with which to examine the neurochemical bases of prospective memory and to dissociate strategic from automatic components of ProM retrieval.
Methods
In three experiments, minimally deprived (2 h) smokers either smoked or abstained prior to completing a standard prospective memory study. This involved participants in the simultaneous processing of a ProM task and a cover task (ongoing between the setting and the recall of the intention). Here, the ongoing task involved lexical decision (LDT), while the ProM task required a response to pre-specified target items occurring within the LDT stimuli. Variations in task instructions were used to manipulate the processing requirements of the ProM task, the attention allocated to the ProM task and the balance of importance assigned to the ongoing and ProM tasks.
Results
In experiment 1, where the ProM processing was automatic, nicotine did not improve ProM accuracy. In experiment 2, where the ProM task involved strategic processing, positive effects of nicotine were observed. In experiment 3, we covaried ProM task instructions, assigned task importance and nicotine conditions. We observed a main effect of nicotine on ProM accuracy, a main effect of task on ProM accuracy and a main effect of assigned task importance on ProM accuracy. There were no interactions between the factors.
Conclusions
Employing both direct and indirect manipulations of strategic engagement, we demonstrated nicotine-induced enhancement of performance on the ProM task. The results are consistent with the view that relatively small changes in instruction and in task variables engage strategic processing in a ProM task and that when these conditions stretch cognitive resources, nicotine may significantly improve performance.
Comparable Effects of Nicotine in Smokers and Nonsmokers on a Prospective Memory Task
Rusted and Trawley (2006). Comparable Effects of Nicotine in Smokers and Nonsmokers on a Prospective Memory Task. Neuropsychopharmacology (2006) 31, 1545–1549.
In a double-blind placebo-controlled study, we examined the effect of nicotine, a cholinergic agonist, on performance... more In a double-blind placebo-controlled study, we examined the effect of nicotine, a cholinergic agonist, on performance of a prospective memory (ProM) task in young adult volunteers. Volunteers were required to complete an ongoing lexical decision task while maintaining the ProM task (responding with a different button press to items containing particular target letters). Half of the volunteers were smokers, half were nonsmokers. Half of each group received a single dose (1 mg) of nicotine nasal spray before completing the task; the remaining volunteers received a matched inactive placebo spray. Nicotine improved performance on the ProM task when volunteers were able to devote resources to that task. Under a variant procedure, where volunteers completed a concurrent auditory monitoring task, ProM performance was impaired under nicotine. Results are discussed in terms of the resource model of ProM, and the arousal model of drug effects. The data suggest that ProM under the conditions tested here is a resource-needy process, and that nicotine can improve performance by increasing available resources. Increased working memory demands that encourage redirection of resources may impair ProM performance, but the conditions under which these deficits emerge depend upon the subjective allocation of resources across tasks, rather than resource availability per se.
Prospective memory or prospective attention: physiological and pharmacological support for an attentional model.
Marchant, Trawley, and Rusted (2007). Prospective memory or prospective attention: physiological and pharmacological support for an attentional model. Int J Neuropsychopharmacology. 2007 Nov 27; 1-11
Previous studies have reported that nicotine, a cholinergic agonist, could improve prospective memory (PM) – memory... more Previous studies have reported that nicotine, a cholinergic agonist, could improve prospective memory (PM) – memory for a delayed intention – in healthy young adults. In the present study, we asked whether nicotine effects on PM performance were attributable to a drug-induced non-specific increase in arousal. Therefore, a double-blind, placebo-controlled study compared the effect of nicotine to the effect of an arousal manipulation on PM performance. All participants were non-smokers; half received 1 mg nicotine via a nasal spray and half received a matched placebo. Within these groups, half of the volunteers were exposed to hard anagrams and exhibited heightened tense arousal, while half of the volunteers were given easy anagrams and showed no change in arousal. These manipulations resulted in four conditions, placebo/low-arousal (n=12), placebo/high-arousal (n=10), nicotine/low-arousal (n=12), nicotine/high-arousal (n=13). All participants completed an ongoing lexical decision task while maintaining a PM intention (to make a separate, non-focal, response to certain items embedded within the ongoing task). When introduced separately, both nicotine and high tense arousal improved PM performance, but when combined, this improvement was eliminated. It is argued that both nicotine and high tense arousal increase attentional resources, specifically improving monitoring of the PM targets, but when combined they no longer produce beneficial effects. Additionally, given that nicotine exerted no effect on physiological or subjective measures of arousal, we conclude that the observed effects of nicotine and of arousal on PM performance are driven by different pharmacological mechanisms.
Positive effects of nicotine on cognition: the deployment of attention for prospective memory.
Rusted, Sawyer, Jones, Trawley, and Marchant (2009). Positive effects of nicotine on cognition: the deployment of attention for prospective memory. Psychopharmacology, 202 (1-3), p 93-102.
Rationale
Human and animal studies over the last two decades report that nicotine can improve cognitive... more
Rationale
Human and animal studies over the last two decades report that nicotine can improve cognitive performance. Prospective memory (PM), the retrieval and implementation of a previously encoded intention, is also improved by pre-administration of nicotine. As with other nicotine effects, however, predicting precisely how and when nicotine improves the processes engaged by PM has proved less straightforward.
Objective
We present two studies that explore the source of nicotine’s enhancement of PM. Experiment 1 tests for effects of nicotine on preparatory attention (PA) for PM target detection. Experiment 2 asks whether nicotine enhances processing of the perceptual attributes of the PM targets.
Materials and methods
Young adult non-smokers matched on baseline performance measures received either 1 mg nicotine or matched placebo via nasal spray. Volunteers completed novel PM tasks at 15 min post-administration.
Results
Experiment 1 confirmed that pre-administration of nicotine to non-smokers improved detection rate for prospective memory targets presented during an attention-demanding ongoing task. There was no relationship between PM performance and measures of preparatory attention. In experiment 2, salient targets were more likely to be detected than non-salient targets, but nicotine did not confer any additional advantage to salient targets.
Conclusion
The present study suggests that nicotinic stimulation does not work to enhance perceptual salience of target stimuli (experiment 2), nor does it work through better deployment of preparatory working attention (experiment 1). An alternative explanation that nicotine promotes PM detection by facilitating disengagement from the ongoing task is suggested as a future line of investigation.
Investigating the valence and saliency of commonly used smoking-related words in adolescent and adult smokers and non-smokers
Co-authored with Dr. Michael Gormley, Trinity College Dublin; Presented at PSI Annual Conference, 2011
The extent to which positive and negative cues capture attention is routinely debated yet stimuli used in... more
The extent to which positive and negative cues capture attention is routinely debated yet stimuli used in addiction-related tasks often disregard valence. In this study, 36 commonly used smoking-related words were rated for valence and saliency by 84 smokers (age 15-18: 28, 19-25: 27, 26-40: 29), and 93 non-smokers (35, 29, 29). All smokers rated smoking words more positively than non-smokers. There was no difference for salience. Analysis of the 10 most positive and 10 most negative words revealed a main effect of smoking status for each. While there was no effect of age for non-smokers, adolescent smokers rated smoking-positive, but not negative, words significantly more positively than both adult groups. Results suggest that smokers’ demonstrate a positivity bias towards smoking-related words, notably positive words, which declines with age. This bias is likely to confound results unless controlled for. Future research should investigate the extent of this impact on implicit smoking tasks.
Keywords: Nicotine, Stimulus Creation, Valence, Cognitive Bias
Smoking expectancies: How age and smoking status impact on implicit and explicit evaluations of smoking
Co-authored with Dr. Michael Gormley, Trinity College Dublin; Presented at SRNT-Europe, 2011
Aim: Smoking expectancies have long been associated with smoking behaviour yet anomalies between self-reported beliefs... more
Aim: Smoking expectancies have long been associated with smoking behaviour yet anomalies between self-reported beliefs and actual behaviour suggest that implicit and explicit evaluations of smoking differ. As expectancies have been shown to change with experience, this study examined the accessibility and availability of smoking expectancies in adolescent and adult smokers and nonsmokers.
Method: 89 smokers (15-18yrs: 33, 19-25: 27, 26-40: 29) and 142 nonsmokers (15-18: 83, 19-25: 30, 26-40: 29) participated. A free-association (FA) task identified implicit smoking expectancies. Temporal accessibility was assessed by comparing words in both halves (T1, T2). A Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ) measured explicit expectancies. Difference scores (positive minus negative) determined the relative balance of expectancies in both the FA and SCQ. Standardised difference scores facilitated their direct comparison.
Results: Smokers generated significantly more positive and less negative FA words than nonsmokers. They generated similar numbers of T1 positive and negative words while nonsmokers were significantly more negative. Only 15-18 smokers gave an overall positive implicit evaluation of smoking but both 15-18 and 26-40 smokers were net positive in T1. All groups gave an explicit negative evaluation of smoking with nonsmokers most negative. In smokers, 26-40 were significantly more negative than both 15-18 and 19-25. Significant smoking status x age interactions existed for 3 factors: NPF (p=.008); NSI (p=.003) and NAR (p=.034). Finally, smokers gave significantly more positive evaluations of smoking in FA T1 than on the SCQ, a difference not seen for nonsmokers or between the SCQ and the total FA difference scores.
Conclusion: Both positive and negative smoking expectancies are available to smokers and nonsmokers but the temporal order differs between the two. Positive expectancies are more accessible to all smokers. Youngest smokers gave an overall positive evaluation of smoking but only on the implicit measure. Despite negative smoking-related information being available in memory, it may not always be accessible when making everyday smoking-related decisions.
Chronic exposure to nicotine is associated with reduced reward-related activity in the striatum but not the midbrain
Emma Jane Rose, PhD.1,* Thomas J. Ross, PhD.1, Betty Jo Salmeron, M.D. 1, Mary Lee, M.D. 1, Diaa M. Shakleya, PhD.2, Marilyn Huestis, PhD.2, and Elliot A. Stein, PhD.1. Biological Psychiatry, 71(3), 206-213
Background: The reinforcing effects of nicotine are mediated by brain regions that also support temporal difference... more
Background: The reinforcing effects of nicotine are mediated by brain regions that also support temporal difference error (TDE) processing, yet the impact of nicotine on TDE is undetermined.
Methods: Dependent smokers (N=21) and matched controls (N=21) were trained to associate a juice reward with a visual cue in a classical conditioning paradigm. Subjects subsequently underwent fMRI sessions in which they were exposed to trials where they either received juice as temporally predicted or where the juice was withheld (negative TDE) and later received unexpectedly (positive TDE). Subjects were scanned in two sessions that were identical except that smokers had a transdermal nicotine (21mg) or placebo patch placed before scanning. Analysis focused on regions along the trajectory of mesocorticolimbic (MCL) and nigrostriatal (NS) dopaminergic pathways.
Results: There was a reduction in TDE-related function in smokers in the striatum, which did not differ as a function of patch manipulation, but was predicted by the duration (years) of smoking. Activation in midbrain regions was not impacted by group or drug condition.
Conclusions: These data suggest a differential effect of smoking status on the neural substrates of reward in distinct dopaminergic pathway regions, which may be partially attributable to chronic nicotine exposure. The failure of transdermal nicotine to alter reward-related functional processes either within smokers or between smokers and controls implies that acute nicotine patch administration is insufficient to modify reward processing, which has been linked to abstinence-induced anhedonia in smokers and may play a critical role in smoking relapse.
Nicotine modulation of information processing is not limited to input (attention) but extends to output (intention)
Rose EJ, Ross TJ, Kurup PK, Stein EA.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2010 May;209(4):291-302. Epub 2010 Mar 23.
Rationale
Nicotine influences many cognitive processes, especially those requiring high attentional loads, yet... more
Rationale
Nicotine influences many cognitive processes, especially those requiring high attentional loads, yet the impact of nicotine on all aspects of information processing has not been well delineated.
Objective
The aim of the study was to determine the relative behavioral and functional effects of nicotine on dissociable aspects of information processing (i.e., selective attention and motor intention).
Methods
Adult smokers (N = 25) and healthy controls (N = 23) performed the intention/attention task (IAT) twice, during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The IAT assesses the relative differences in performance evoked by prime stimuli that provide information regarding either the correct hand with which to respond (i.e., intentional primes) or the likely location of a target stimulus (i.e., attentional primes). Smokers were scanned 2 h after nicotine (21 mg) or placebo patch placement. The order of nicotine and placebo sessions was randomized and counter-balanced. Controls were also scanned twice, with no patch placement in either session.
Results
While drug condition had no significant effect on reaction time, smokers were overall more accurate than controls. Moreover, nicotine significantly increased the response to intentional primes in brain regions known to mediate response readiness, e.g., inferior parietal lobe, supramarginal gyrus, and striatum.
Conclusions
While limited to participant accuracy, these data suggest that the behavioral effects of nicotine in smokers are not only limited to information processing input (i.e., selective attention) but are also generalizable to output functions (i.e., motor intention). Moreover, nicotine’s effects on intention appear to be mediated by a facilitation of function in brain regions associated with information processing output.
Evidence for elevated nicotine-induced structural plasticity in nucleus accumbens of adolescent rats.
Male Long-Evans rats were administered nicotine bitartrate or sodium tartrate either during adolescence (p29-43) or... more Male Long-Evans rats were administered nicotine bitartrate or sodium tartrate either during adolescence (p29-43) or adulthood (p80-94). Route of administration was via subcutaneously implanted osmotic pump (initial dose 2.0 mg/kg/day, free base). Five weeks following nicotine administration, brains were processed for Golgi-Cox staining. Medium spiny neurons from nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell were digitally reconstructed for morphometric analysis. Total dendritic length and branch number were greater in medium spiny neurons from animals pretreated with nicotine during adolescence. A branch order analysis indicated that increased branch number was specific to higher order branches. Mean branch lengths did not differ with respect to treatment as a function of branch order. Thus, nicotine-induced increases in total dendritic length were a function of greater numbers of branches, not increased segment length. In contrast, adult nicotine exposure did not significantly alter total dendritic length or branch number of medium spiny neurons. Total dendritic length and branch number of a second morphological type, the large aspiny neuron, did not differ following either adolescent or adult pretreatment. The age-dependent alteration of accumbal structure was associated with qualitatively different behavioral responses to drug challenge. These data provide evidence that drug-induced structural plasticity in nucleus accumbens is considerably more pronounced during adolescence.
Periadolescent nicotine administration produces enduring changes in dendritic morphology of medium spiny neurons from nucleus accumbens
The objective of the current study was to examine how periadolescent nicotine exposure affects dendritic morphology of... more The objective of the current study was to examine how periadolescent nicotine exposure affects dendritic morphology of medium spiny neurons from the nucleus accumbens shell. Male Long-Evans hooded rats were chronically administered nicotine or saline for a period extending from postnatal day 22 (p22) to p69. Nicotine and saline administration was via subcutaneously implanted osmotic pumps. At p144, 75 days after conclusion of nicotine administration, brains were processed for Golgi-Cox staining. Medium spiny neurons from the nucleus accumbens shell were digitally reconstructed. It was found that neurons from nicotine-treated animals possessed significantly longer dendrites and a greater number of dendritic segments than control animals. A branch order analysis indicated that differences in dendritic length and segment number were most pronounced in third and fourth order segments. A subsequent behavioral experiment suggests that the observed anatomical changes are associated with enduring psychomotor differences. These findings indicate that periadolescent exposure to nicotine can result in long-lasting structural changes in the nucleus accumbens shell and are consistent with behavioral data suggesting that adolescent nicotine exposure may result in vulnerability to nicotine addiction in adulthood.
A Markov Model of Smoking Cessation
Tobacco is viewed as a binary weapon: its MAOIs deplete DA; its nicotine phasically repletes it.
Survival functions from smoking cessation interventions are de- scribed by a three-state Markov model. On quitting,... more Survival functions from smoking cessation interventions are de- scribed by a three-state Markov model. On quitting, smokers transit through a state of withdrawal characterized by a high rate of relapse, and then into a more secure state of long-term abstinence. The Markov model embodies the dynamic nature of the cessation/ relapse process; it permits stronger inference to long-term absti- nence rates, provides measures of treatment efficacy, describes the outcomes of new quit attempts, and suggests mechanisms for the survival process.