Two New Nicotine Studies
One papers linking childhood nicotine exposure to chemical tolerance, the other links vaping to depression.
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by Dave Cross
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In Paternal nicotine exposure alters hepatic xenobiotic metabolism in offspring, published in the biomedical sciences journal eLife, the UMass academics say: “Environmental conditions experienced in one generation can affect phenotypes that manifest in future generations, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the ‘inheritance of acquired characters’.”
They point to studies where the father’s environment passes physiological changes onto his offspring through the DNA contained in the sperm. The team wondered, what does this mean for fathers who have a nicotine addiction?
Oliver Rando, the team lead, explains the results: “Children born of fathers who have been exposed to nicotine are programmed to be not only more resistant to nicotine toxicity, but to other chemicals as well.”
“If a similar phenomenon occurs in humans, this raises many important questions,” he continued. “For example, if your father smoked does that mean chemotherapy might be less effective for you? Are you more or less likely to smoke? It's important to understand what information is specifically being passed down from father to offspring and how that impacts us.”
Clearly, experimenting on humans would have been problematic, so the team used mice and provided them with access to nicotine. The offspring were then analysed to see if they were less sensitive to nicotine, and if that extended to other substances. They found that the progenies could withstand toxic levels of nicotine – and cocaine. The team concluded that this is likely to be due to an enhanced ability for the liver to metabolise drugs.
Rando added: “there are obvious reasons to be interested in whether this type of effect also happens in human beings, but given the differences between mice and humans in their metabolism of nicotine, it will need to be tested rigorously in future studies of human populations.”
By contrast, the UTHealth doesn’t move understanding forward. They “discovered that students with elevated levels of depression symptoms were significantly more likely” to vape. But, they didn’t think to find out why.
Team lead Frank Bandiera said: “This is the first study to establish a longitudinal relationship between elevated depressive symptoms and e-cigarette use. We don’t know why depression leads to e-cigarette use. It may be self-medication. Just like with cigarettes, when students feel stressed out, using e-cigarettes may make them feel better. Or it could be that since e-cigarettes have been marketed as a smoking cessation device, depressed students may be using e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking traditional cigarettes.”
Given the studies demonstrating a high incidence of smoking within people suffering from mental health problems, UTHealth have achieved nothing more than repeating the findings that this section of the population desires nicotine.
Photo Credit:
Mouse chromosome chart - https://elifesciences.org/content/6/e24771/article-data
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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