ALCOHOLICS WHO SMOKE MAY LOSE BRAIN EARLY

Jojy Cheriyan MD;MPH-May 20,2013

Alcoholism affects 30% of US population and is the third leading cause of preventable death after smoking and obesity.

There is enormous amount of evidence to show smoking can affect every organ of human body and many scientific studies have proven the cognitive and memory impairments related to alcoholism.

It is also evident that many alcoholics have a higher tendency to smoke and many smokers have a higher tendency to consume alcohol. In the United States smoking kills 440,000 people per year and alcohol kills nearly 100,000 per year.

But when two harmful habits work together in a human body the impact is additive. Only few studies have looked deeply into the additive impact of alcohol and smoking in an alcoholic who is also a smoker.

A new study published (online before print ) on May 17, 2013 in the journal of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Researchis the first to look at the interactive effects of smoking status and age on neurocognition in alcohol dependent (AD) individuals.

Findings of this study show that alcohol-dependent individuals who currently smoke show more problems with memory, ability to think quickly and efficiently, and problem-solving skills than those who don't smoke. These effects seem to become worse as their age increases. They have difficulty remembering , integrating and implementing strategies.

Importance of this study is, it also noticed that those alcohol-dependent smokers who quit smoking and alcohol were able to regain their memory and cognitive skills; in just one month of abstinence.

At one month of abstinence, actively smoking AD individuals had greater-than-normal age effects on measures of learning, memory, processing speed, reasoning and problem-solving, and fine motor skills.

The lead scientist, Timothy Durazzo of University of California and his colleagues compared the neurocognitive functioning of four groups of participants, all between the ages of 26 and 71 years of age: never-smoking healthy individuals or "controls" (n=39); and one-month abstinent, treatment-seeking AD individuals, who were never-smokers (n = 30), former-smokers (n = 21) and active-smokers (n = 68).

After dividing the participants into 4 groups they evaluated cognitive abilities which included cognitive efficiency, executive functions, fine motor skills, general intelligence, learning and memory, processing speed, visuospatial functions, and working memory.

Full version of this study will be published in the October 2013 issue of the Journal Alcoholism:Clinical and Experimental Research. For online abstract click here .

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