{"id":133396,"date":"2015-07-11T06:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T06:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=133396"},"modified":"2015-07-10T17:22:05","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T17:22:05","slug":"smoking-may-play-schizophrenia-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=133396","title":{"rendered":"Smoking &#8216;may play schizophrenia role&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Smoking could play a direct role in the development of schizophrenia and needs to be investigated, researchers say.<\/p>\n<p>The team at King&#8217;s College London say smokers are more likely to develop the disorder and at a younger age.<\/p>\n<p>Published in the Lancet Psychiatry, their analysis of 61 separate studies suggests nicotine in cigarette smoke may be altering the brain.<\/p>\n<p>Experts said it was a &#8220;pretty strong case&#8221; but needed more research.<\/p>\n<p>Smoking has long been associated with psychosis, but it has often been believed that schizophrenia patients are more likely to smoke because they use cigarettes as a form of self-medication to ease the distress of hearing voices or having hallucinations.<\/p>\n<p>The team at King&#8217;s looked at data involving 14,555 smokers and 273,162 non-smokers.<\/p>\n<p>It indicated:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">57% of people with psychosis were already smokers when they had their first psychotic episode<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Daily smokers were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as non-smokers<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Smokers developed schizophrenia a year earlier on average<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The argument is that if there is a higher rate of smoking before schizophrenia is diagnosed, then smoking is not simply a case of self-medication.<\/p>\n<p>Dr James MacCabe, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King&#8217;s, said: &#8220;It&#8217;s very difficult to establish causation [with this style of study], what we&#8217;re hoping that this does is really open our eyes to the possibility that tobacco could be a causative agent in psychosis, and we hope this will then lead to other research and clinical trials that would help to provide firmer evidence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Clearly most smokers do not develop schizophrenia, but the researchers believe it is increasing the risk.<\/p>\n<p>The overall incidence of the condition is one in every 100 people normally, which may be increased to two per 100 by smoking.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers said nicotine altered levels of the brain chemical dopamine, which has already been implicated in the psychosis.<\/p>\n<p>Prof Michael Owen, the director of the Institute of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University, said the researchers had made a &#8220;pretty strong case&#8221; that smoking may increase the risk of schizophrenia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fact is that it is very hard to prove causation without a randomised trial, but there are plenty of good reasons already for targeting public health measures very energetically at the mentally ill.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The charity Rethink Mental Illness said: &#8220;We know that 42% of all cigarettes smoked in England are by people with mental health problems, and so any new findings about the link between smoking and psychosis is a potential worry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, longer-term studies are needed to fully understand this potential link.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smoking could play a direct role in the development of schizophrenia and needs to be investigated, researchers say. The team at King&#8217;s College London say smokers are more likely to develop the disorder and at a younger age. Published in the Lancet Psychiatry, their analysis of 61 separate studies suggests nicotine in cigarette smoke may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":65453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-133396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-chinese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}