Smoking and schizophrenia linked by alterations in brain nicotine signals

New study in Biological Psychiatry

2014-09-16

(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, PA, September 16, 2014 – Schizophrenia is associated with increased rates and intensity of tobacco smoking. A growing body of research suggests that the relationship between schizophrenia and smoking stems, in part, from an effort by patients to use nicotine to self-medicate symptoms and cognitive impairment associated with the disease.

A new study, published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, sheds light on this hypothesis. The authors found that the level of nicotine receptors in the brain was lower in schizophrenia patients than in a matched healthy group. Further, smoking, which is known to increase the levels of receptors for nicotine in the brain, had this effect in both groups, although was blunted in schizophrenia.

However, in the schizophrenia group, the smoking-related increase in the level of nicotine receptors was associated with lower levels of social withdrawal, blunted emotional and motivational responses, as well as better cognitive function.

Nicotine mimics the actions of a natural chemical messenger, acetylcholine, which stimulates the receptors for nicotine in the brain. So, to conduct this work, Yale University School of Medicine researchers used single photon emission computed tomography to quantify the availability of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (β2*-nAChRs) in smoking and nonsmoking individuals with schizophrenia and healthy subjects.

First author and Assistant Professor Dr. Irina Esterlis details their findings, "We found a blunted effect of tobacco smoking on the β2*-nAChR system in individuals with schizophrenia. Furthermore, we found that lower receptor availability of β2*-nAChRs in smokers with schizophrenia is associated with worse negative symptoms and worse performance on tests of executive function."

These findings may be relevant to the high rates of smoking in schizophrenia.

"The data seem to suggest that smoking might produce some clinical benefits for some patients by increasing the availability of receptor targets for nicotine in the brain," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "This finding adds to evidence that brain nicotine-related signaling might play a role for new medications developed to treat schizophrenia."

Esterlis agreed and added, "These findings suggest that β2*-nAChRs may be a target for developing treatments for negative symptoms and cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia, for which no effective treatments exist."

INFORMATION: The article is "In Vivo Evidence for β2 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Subunit Upregulation in Smokers as Compared With Nonsmokers With Schizophrenia" by Irina Esterlis, Mohini Ranganathan, Frederic Bois, Brian Pittman, Marina R. Picciotto, Lara Shearer, Alan Anticevic, Jon Carlson, Mark J. Niciu, Kelly P. Cosgrove, and D. Cyril D'Souza (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.11.001). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 76, Issue 6 (September 15, 2014), published by Elsevier.

Notes Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Dr. Irina Esterlis at irina.esterlis@yale.edu.

The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.

John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Chief of Psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.

About Biological Psychiatry Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.

The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.

Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 5th out of 135 Psychiatry titles and 14th out of 251 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports® published by Thomson Reuters. The 2013 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 9.472.

About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions — among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence, and ClinicalKey — and publishes nearly 2,200 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and over 25,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions in the Science, Medical, Legal and Risk and Business sectors, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Pairing social networks with social motives to close the science gap

2014-09-16

Scientists make discoveries everyday, but that doesn't mean the findings are put into common practice. In India, for example, the neonatal mortality rate is 10 times higher than in the developed world. While clinical trials found that applying an inexpensive topical solution of chlorhexidine to cleanse a newborn's umbilical cord reduced the neonatal mortality rate by 24 percent, many Indian parents did not receive or follow this information. "The challenge is not that we don't have solutions to solve major societal problems, but that we struggle with how to take a ...

NOAA team reveals forgotten ghost ships off Golden Gate

2014-09-16

A team of NOAA researchers today confirmed the discovery just outside San Francisco's Golden Gate strait of the 1910 shipwreck SS Selja and an unidentified early steam tugboat wreck tagged the "mystery wreck." The researchers also located the 1863 wreck of the clipper ship Noonday, currently obscured by mud and silt on the ocean floor. These and other shipwreck investigations mark the first mission of a two-year project to locate, identify and better understand some of the estimated 300 wrecks in Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and the adjacent Golden ...

More cheese, please! New study shows dairy is good for your metabolic health

2014-09-16

This news release is available in French. Dairy is considered part of a healthy diet and dietary guidelines recommend the daily consumption of 2-4 portions of milk-based products such as milk, yogurt, cheese, cream and butter. It's well known that dairy products contain calcium and minerals good for bones, but new research has shown that dairy consumption may also have beneficial effects on metabolic health and can reduce risk of metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Curious about these impacts, researchers from CHU de Québec Research Center ...

Neuroimaging technique identifies concussion-related brain disease in living brain

2014-09-16

An experimental positron emission tomography (PET) tracer is effective in diagnosing concussion-related brain disease while a person is still alive, according to a case study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and at Molecular Neuroimaging (MNI) LLC in New Haven, and published September 16 in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Specifically, the study results suggest that an experimental radiolabeled compound called [18 F]-T807, which is designed to latch onto a protein called tau that accumulates in the brain with repetitive blows to the head, ...

Lactation linked to reduced estrogen receptor-negative, triple-negative breast cancer risk

2014-09-16

(Boston) — Women who have had children (parous women) appear to have an increased risk of developing estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, the subtype that carries a higher mortality rate and is more common in women of African ancestry. A similar relationship was found for triple-negative breast cancer. However, the association between childbearing and increased risk of estrogen receptor-negative and triple-negative breast cancer was largely confined to the women who had never breastfed. These findings, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggest ...

Select group of stage IV lung cancer patients achieve long-term survival after aggressive treatments

2014-09-16

San Francisco, September 16, 2014—A large, international analysis of patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) indicates that a patient's overall survival (OS) rate can be related to factors including the timing of when metastases develop and lymph node involvement, and that aggressive treatment for "low-risk" patients leads to a five-year OS rate of 47.8 percent, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. When lung cancer has spread from an original tumor to other sites of the ...

New gene research helps pinpoint prostate cancer risk

2014-09-16

Scientists could soon better predict a man's risk of getting prostate cancer after a worldwide team of researchers carried out the largest-ever analysis of the cancer's genetic biomarkers, reported in Nature Genetics today. QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation's Dr Jyotsna Batra and Distinguished Professor Judith Clements, who led the Australian researchers in the large consortia of research hubs around the world, said the teams analysed more than 10 million genetic markers in 80,000 men. "It's the largest analysis of genetic biomarkers ever done. We found ...

Scientists create therapy-grade stem cells using new cocktail to reprogram adult cells

2014-09-16

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a new cocktail that is highly effective at coaxing adult cells to become quality pluripotent stem cells. Regenerative medicine is a new and expanding area that aims to replace lost or damaged cells, tissues or organs through cellular transplantation. Because stem cells derived from human embryos can trigger ethical concerns, a good solution is reprogramming adult cells back to an embryo-like state using a combination of reprogramming factors. The resulting cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells ...

NSCLC patients who never smoked or who quit smoking have lower risk of developing secondary cancers

2014-09-16

San Francisco, September 16, 2014— Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survivors who never smoked or who are former smokers at the time of diagnosis have a lower risk of developing secondary primary lung cancers (SPLC) compared to those who are current smokers, suggesting that increased tobacco exposure is associated with a higher risk of SPLC, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. The analysis studied the association between patients' smoking histories and their risks of developing SPLC, which ...

Poor body size judgement can lead to increased tolerance of obesity

2014-09-16

Size is relative, especially to people who tend to be on the heavy side. Researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center in the US found that seven in every ten obese adults underestimate how much someone weighs. People of normal weight make this mistake much less often. Mothers of overweight or obese children also tend to misjudge their children's size, as youngsters misjudge their obese mothers' size, says lead author Tracy Paul, now at Weill-Cornell Medical College, in a study¹ in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. If abnormal weight ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Increasing the number of coronary interventions in patients with acute myocardial infarction does not appear to reduce death rates

Striking genomic architecture discovered in embryonic reproductive cells before they start developing into sperm and eggs

AABNet and partners launch landmark guide on the conservation of African livestock genetic resources and sustainable breeding strategies

Produce hydrogen and oxygen simultaneously from a single atom! Achieve carbon neutrality with an 'All-in-one' single-atom water electrolysis catalyst

Sleep loss linked to higher atrial fibrillation risk in working-age adults

Visible light-driven deracemization of α-aryl ketones synergistically catalyzed by thiophenols and chiral phosphoric acid

Babies with an increased likelihood of autism may struggle to settle into deep, restorative sleep, according to a new study from the University of East Anglia.