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Why women find it harder to quit smoking
AGENCIES | Washington, April 6, 2012 09:42
Tags : why women find it harder to quit smoking | Women's brain respond differently to nicotine | Yale University School of Medicine in US | male smokers had higher nicotine receptors | study author Kelly Cosgrove | habit of smoking |
Tags : why women find it harder to quit smoking | Women's brain respond differently to nicotine | Yale University School of Medicine in US | male smokers had higher nicotine receptors | study author Kelly Cosgrove | habit of smoking |
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It's known that women find it a bit harder to kick the butt than men. Now, a new study has found why - it's because their brains respond quite differently to nicotine than male smokers.
When a person smokes, the number of nicotine receptors inthe brain - which bind to nicotine and reinforce the habit of smoking - are thought to increase in number.
Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine in the US found this is true in men - male smokers had a greater number of nicotine receptors compared to nonsmokers.
But surprisingly, women smokers had about the same number of nicotine receptors as nonsmokers, they found.
"When you look at it by gender, you see this big difference," study author Kelly Cosgrove, an assistant professor of psychiatry, was quoted as saying by LiveScience.
The findings suggest that elements of smoking not related to nicotine, such as the smell and act of holding a cigarette, may play a greater role in fuelling the habit of women smokers compared with men, Cosgrove said.
The results are important because the main treatments for people who want to quit smoking are nicotine-replacement therapies, such as nicotine patches and gums, he said.
The study, published in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, suggests women smokers may benefit more from other types of treatment that don't involve nicotine, including behavioural therapies, such as exercise or relaxation techniques, and non-nicotine containing medications, he added.
n the study, Cosgrove and colleagues scanned the brains of 52 men and 58 women, about half of whom were smokers. They examined nicotine receptors in brain by using a radioactive marker that binds specifically to receptors that are primarily responsible for the body's physical dependence on nicotine.
Smokers in the study had abstained from smoking for a week so that their nicotine receptors would be free to bind to the marker used for imaging.
The researchers found that male smokers had about 16 per cent more nicotine receptors in an area of their brain known
as the striatum, 17 per cent more in the cerebellum, and 13 to 17 per cent more in the cortical region, or outside layer, of the brain compared with male nonsmokers.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
