Neuroscience of Nicotine

Mechanisms and Treatment

Victor R Preedy, Victor R. Preedy

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780128130353
• eBook ISBN: 9780128130360
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Neuroscience
• Index: Psychology

Neuroscience of Nicotine: Mechanisms and Treatment presents the fundamental information necessary for a thorough understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of nicotine addiction and its effects on the brain. Offering thorough coverage of all aspects of nicotine research, treatment, policy and prevention, and containing contributions from internationally recognized experts, the book provides students, early-career researchers, and investigators at all levels with a fundamental introduction to all aspects of nicotine misuse.With an estimated one billion individuals worldwide classified as tobacco users—and tobacco use often being synonymous with nicotine addiction—nicotine is one of the world's most common addictive substances, and a frequent comorbidity of misuse of other common addictive substances. Nicotine alters a variety of neurological processes, from molecular biology, to cognition, and quitting is exceedingly difficult because of the number of withdrawal symptoms that accompany the process.- Integrates cutting-edge research on the pharmacological, cellular and molecular aspects of nicotine use, along with its effects on neurobiological function- Discusses nicotine use as a component of dual-use and poly addictions and outlines numerous screening and treatment strategies for misuse- Covers both the physical and psychological effects of nicotine use and withdrawal to provide a fully-formed view of nicotine dependency and its effects

Chapter 1

Understanding Tobacco Use in Different Countries

Fabrizio Ferretti School of Social Sciences, Department of Communication and Economics (DCE), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE), Reggio Emilia, Italy

Abstract

Understanding the economic determinants of tobacco consumption and measuring tobacco use across countries are essential to design and implement effective tobacco prevention programs. This chapter is a brief guide to some basic concepts of tobacco epidemiology and economics. Firstly, we introduce the main indicators usually employed to assess tobacco consumption in a given population. Secondly, we develop a simple demand model to illustrate how prices, consumers’ income and tastes, and tobacco control measures interact in determining the quantity consumed and the number of smokers. Finally, we use the latest estimations available to provide an overview of tobacco use worldwide.

Keywords

Cigarettes consumption; Price elasticity; Smoking intensity; Smoking prevalence; Tobacco demand

Abbreviations

CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States

NIH National Institutes of Health, United States

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

WBG The World Bank Group

WHO World Health Organization

GBD Global Burden of Diseases

IARC International Agency for Research on Cancer

1.1 Introduction

There is a good variety of tobacco-based products that allow people around the world to consume tobacco in many different forms, according to local preferences and customs. For instance, tobacco products may be combusted (e.g., cigarettes and bidis), heated (e.g., water pipes and hookah), or even taken orally or nasally (e.g., snuff, betel quid, and chewing tobacco). Each population has its own cultural traditions—for example, bidis in India or hookah and snuff in the Middle East and South Asian countries, respectively (Hammond, 2009, p. 3).

However, along with industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, the consumption of manufactured cigarettes has grown sharply and spread across virtually all countries over the last century. As a result, cigarettes nowadays have become the predominant form of tobacco use worldwide, accounting for about 92% of total tobacco product sales globally. This is why in tobacco epidemiology, looking at current public health challenges, the terms “tobacco use” and “cigarette smoking” are often used as synonyms (NIH, 2016, chap. 2).

1.2 Basic Concepts of Tobacco Epidemiology

In each population, the magnitude and pattern of tobacco consumption result from the interplay between various individual and collective influences (Warner & MacKay, 2006). An adapted epidemiological “triangle model” of agent, host, vector, and environment, as depicted in Fig. 1.1, provides a useful framework to describe and conceptualize these complex relationships (Penn State, 2016; Slade, 1993, chap. 1). Tobacco—in the form, for instance, of cigarette smoking—acts as the agent (i.e., the “necessary” factor that is required for a disease to occur, although it may not inevitably lead to disease). All habitual smokers are hosts who, at least potentially, due to cigarette consumption, may develop one or more tobacco-related diseases (that usually result in disability and death). The tobacco companies play the role of vectors (i.e., anything that transports and disseminates the agent to susceptible individuals) by producing cigarettes and promoting their use within the population to expand the size of the market (i.e., the number of smokers and the number of cigarettes consumed per smoker). Finally, hosts and vectors operate and interact in a social environment determined by the interplay of a wide range of psychological, cultural, legal, and economic factors (Giovino, 2002).

Fig. 1.1 Interactions between agent, hosts, vectors, and environment in tobacco epidemic. From: Penn State. (2016). Epidemiologic Triad. Department of Statistics. Pennsylvania State University. Available at: https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/node/25. Originally adapted from Egger, G., Swinburn, B., & Rossner, S. (2003). Dusting off the epidemiological triad: could it work with obesity? Obesity Reviews 4(2), 115–119.

Given the outstanding role of tobacco as a major risk factor for several chronic noncommunicable diseases (such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and many types of cancer), measuring the distribution and intensity of tobacco use across the world is crucial for (1) better understanding the determinants of smoking behavior, (2) developing effective public health programs, and (3) monitoring countries’ progress (GBD, 2015). Overall, to study the pattern of tobacco use and to simulate the impact of tobacco control policies in specific populations, epidemiologists rely today on aggregate (i.e., compartmental) and individual (i.e., agent-based) comprehensive and sophisticated models (CDC, 2014, chap. 15). However, the “bread and butter” of monitoring tobacco use at country level and over time still consists of measuring (or better estimating) two key health policy variables—the prevalence of smoking and the intensity of smoking—by using either a direct and an indirect approach or both (IARC, 2008, chap. 3).

The prevalence of smoking in a given population is usually assessed using a direct approach—that is, by asking a sample of representative subjects their smoking status and behavior (Bonnie, Stratton, & Wallace, 2007). These surveys provide information about the identity of smokers (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, educational attainment, and income levels) and about each smoker's habits and attitudes. Specifically, according to self-reported information, respondents are classified, as shown in Fig. 1.2, into three main categories: never, current, and former smokers (CDC, 2014, chap. 15). The number of people in each group is a stock variable (i.e., a quantity measured at a given point in time). Monitoring of the population under study over time gives the number of smoking initiations, cessations, and relapses. These are flow variables (i.e., quantities measured over a period of time) that represent the amount of change in each stock during a given time lapse (for instance, a year).

Fig. 1.2 Stock and flow variables in tobacco epidemiology.

Data on stock and flow variables are more meaningful if converted into rates by dividing the number of cases in a given category (e.g., the number of smokers) by the corresponding number of people in the population at risk (the sum of never, current, and former smokers), where both the numerator and denominator may refer to the entire sample under study (usually composed of the population aged 15 and over) or to a specific subset, disaggregated by sex, gender, age, and so on (Bonita, Beaglehole, & Kjellstrom, 2006, chap. 2). Advanced statistical techniques are usually applied to gather results from different surveys of a given population to obtain country-level estimates of the prevalence of smoking. Within this framework, the prevalence rate of smoking among the general population provides information on the proportion of current tobacco users in a given country. Finally, these national simple (crude) rates are age-standardized to allow fair comparisons across countries with populations of different age structures (WHO, 2015).

Tobacco use surveys also register self-reported data on the number of cigarettes consumed per day by each smoker. These figures, combined with prevalence data, yield estimates of the total number of cigarettes consumed in the population under study over a given period of time (usually a year). Total cigarette consumption is a basic indicator of the size of the tobacco market in a given economy. Dividing aggregate consumption by the country's number of smokers gives the average number of cigarettes consumed by each smoker. This is a useful country measure of the intensity of smoking, typically expressed as mean daily consumption—that is, the number of cigarettes consumed by the “average smoker” per day (Guindon & Boisclair, 2003). Total and average cigarette consumption, however, are also assessed at country level by using an indirect approach. Indirect estimates are mainly based on national commodity balance-sheet statistics. In fact, the ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Preface
• Editorial Advisors
• Chapter 1: Understanding Tobacco Use in Different Countries
• Chapter 2: Maternal Smoking and Fetal Brain Outcome: Mechanisms and Possible Solutions
• Chapter 3: Nicotine Effects in Adolescents
• Chapter 4: The Impact of Traditional Cigarettes and E-Cigarettes on the Brain
• Chapter 5: Reduction of Nicotine in Tobacco and Impact
• Chapter 6: Prenatal Nicotine Exposure and Neuronal Progenitor Cells
• Chapter 7: Synaptically Located Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Subunits in Neurons Involved in Dependency to Nicotine
• Chapter 8: Cotinine as a Possible Allosteric Modulator of Nicotine Effects in Various Models
• Chapter 9: Nicotine, Neural Plasticity, and Nicotine's Therapeutic Potential
• Chapter 10: Habenular Synapses and Nicotine
• Chapter 11: Nicotine Neuroprotection of Brain Neurons: The Other Side of Nicotine Addiction
• Chapter 12: Linking Nicotine, Menthol, and Brain Changes
• Chapter 13: Cigarette Smoking and Nicotine: Effects on Multiple Sclerosis
• Chapter 14: Tobacco and Positron-Emission Tomography (PET) of the Dopaminergic System: A Review of Human Studies
• Chapter 15: Resting-State Functional Connectivity Imaging and Nicotine Dependence
• Chapter 16: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Acute Nicotine Effects
• Chapter 17: Nicotine Dependence in Schizophrenia: Contributions of Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors
• Chapter 18: Attentional Bias and Smoking
• Chapter 19: Effects of Nicotine on Inhibitory Control in Humans
• Chapter 20: Nicotine, Corticotropin-Releasing Factor, and Anxiety-Like Behavior
• Chapter 21: 6-Hydroxy-l-Nicotine and Memory Impairment
• Chapter 22: Cotinine and Memory: Remembering to Forget
• Chapter 23: Nicotine in Aberrant Learning and Corticostriatal Plasticity
• Chapter 24: Prenatal Nicotine Exposure and Impact on the Behaviors of Offspring
• Chapter 25: Craving in Substance Use Disorders With a Focus on Cigarette Smoking
• Chapter 26: The Acute Effect of Exercise on Cravings and Withdrawal Symptoms
• Chapter 27: CRF2 Receptor Agonists and Nicotine Withdrawal
• Chapter 28: Delirium and Nicotine Withdrawal
• Chapter 29: Postoperative Nicotine Withdrawal
• Chapter 30: Nicotine and Alpha3beta2 Neuronal Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors
• Chapter 31: Nicotine Addiction and Alpha4beta2* Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors
• Chapter 32: The Medial Habenula-Interpeduncular Nucleus Pathway in Nicotine Sensitization: The Role of α3β4 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors and Substance P
• Chapter 33: Targeting Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors for the Treatment of Pain
• Chapter 34: Pharmacology of Muscle-Type Nicotinic Receptors
• Chapter 35: Involvement of Opioid Receptors in Nicotine-Related Reinforcement and Pleasure
• Chapter 36: Nicotine-Induced Kindling: Influences of Age, Sex, and Prevention by Antioxidants
• Chapter 37: Nicotine Reward and Abstinence: Role of the CB1 Receptors
• Chapter 38: The Therapeutic Potential of the Cognitive-Enhancing Effects of Nicotine and Other Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Agonists
• Chapter 39: Nicotine and Dopamine DA1 Receptor Pharmacology
• Chapter 40: Brain Gene Expression in the Context of Nicotine Rewards: A Focus on Cholinergic Genes
• Chapter 41: HIV-Infected Subjects and Tobacco Smoking: A Focus on Nicotine Effects in the Brain
• Chapter 42: Renin-Angiotensin System Genes and Nicotine Dependence
• Chapter 43: Nicotine Dependence and the CHRNA5/CHRNA3/CHRNB4 Nicotinic Receptor Regulome
• Chapter 44: Brain, Nrf2, and Tobacco: Mechanisms and Countermechanisms Underlying Oxidative-Stress-Mediated Cerebrovascular Effects of Cigarette Smoking
• Chapter 45: Effects of Nicotine and Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors on the Brain
• Chapter 46: L-Type Calcium Channels and Nicotine
• Chapter 47: The Co-occurrence of Nicotine With Other Substance Use and Addiction: Risks, Mechanisms, Consequences, and Implications for Practice, With a Focus on Youth
• Chapter 48: Comorbid Smoking and Gambling Disorder: Potential Underlying Mechanisms and Future Explorations
• Chapter 49: Neuroscience of Tobacco and Crack Cocaine Use: Metabolism, Effects, and Symptomatology
• Chapter 50: Salivary Cotinine Assays
• Chapter 51: Overview of Cotinine Cutoff Values for Smoking Status Classification
• Chapter 52: Smoking Abstinence Expectancies Questionnaire
• Chapter 53: Pharmacist-led Smoking Cessation Services: Current and Future Perspectives
• Chapter 54: Nicotine Use and Weight Control in Young People: Implications for Prevention and Early Intervention
• Chapter 55: Exercise as a Smoking Cessation Aid
• Chapter 56: Varenicline: Treating Smoking Addiction and Schizophrenia
• Chapter 57: Nicotine Vaccines: The Past, the Present, and the Future
• Chapter 58: Treating Nicotine Dependence in Psychiatric Hospitals
• Chapter 59: Oral 18-Methoxycoronaridine (18-MC) Decreases Nicotine Self-Administration in Rats
• Chapter 60: Pharmacogenetics and Smoking Cessation
• Chapter 61: The Orexin System and Nicotine Addiction: Preclinical Insights
• Chapter 62: Tobacco Control Policies and Smokers’ Responses
• Chapter 63: Resources for the Neuroscience of Nicotine
• Index