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ver 70% of the more than 560 physicians who participated in the written survey indicated that e-cigs can help patients reduce or eliminate smoking, and nearly half said that they believe e-cigs can reduce risk. Physicians are less likely to recommend e-cigs as a way to quit smoking. The use of e-cigs for treatment is contentious, as there is currently limited evidence to support their efficacy and safety for smoking reduction or cessation. Approximately two-thirds of the physician respondents report their patients who smoke ask them about e-cigs at least some of the time, and 58% report they ask their patients who smoke about using e-cigs at least some of the time. Overall, 85% of physicians report frequently advising their patients who smoke to quit, and approximately two-thirds frequently provide assistance in helping patients to quit. Some 38% of doctors surveyed have at some point recommended e-cigs to their patients who smoke. If asked by patients whether or not they wou...

In "What is Abnormal About Addiction-Related Attentional Biases?" an article in press in  Drug and Alcohol Dependence , Psychology Professor Brian Anderson argues that normal people show many of the same biases as people who are addicted to drugs. "This suggests that these seemingly 'pathological features' of addiction may in fact reflect a normal cognitive process -- that we are all to some degree 'wired' to become addicted," he explains. Anderson, who specializes in cognitive neuroscience, says one of the features that characterizes addiction is strong attentional biases for drug cues. "Attentional bias is a tendency to direct your attention to something even when it conflicts with your goals, making it difficult to ignore," he notes. "A drug cue is something that serves as a predictive cue for the experience of the drug. An example would be a syringe in the case of an injectable drug, or a bong in the case of a drug that is in...

Dr. Loïc Le Marchand, a professor and leading epidemiologist in the UH Cancer Center's Epidemiology Program, and his colleagues, identified differences in the CYP2A6 gene that are associated with a high rate of nicotine metabolism. Smokers who have these CYP2A6 markers may smoke more cigarettes and/or inhale a greater amount of nicotine per cigarette than smokers who metabolize nicotine less rapidly, in order to maintain stable levels of nicotine in the blood. "Smokers adjust the way they smoke to satisfy their craving for nicotine. Nicotine is the highly addictive component in cigarettes that makes people want to smoke. Smokers with the genetic markers we discovered, smoke more extensively in order to keep their nicotine levels high and achieve the desired effects of nicotine in the brain," said Dr. Le Marchand. "This new finding could identify smokers who are at greater risk for lung cancer. The knowledge of these markers will help doctors and public health...

"People living with chronic pain have few innovative analgesic options available to them outside of systemic opioids. Prolonged use of these opioids can result in respiratory depression, tolerance, addiction, and overdose," says senior study author Nathaniel Jeske of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "Being able to increase the responsiveness of peripheral opioid receptor systems could lead to a reduction in systemic opioid administration , thereby reducing the incidence of side effects." Most clinical opioids currently available target mu opioid receptors, including those located in the brain, and therefore have a high potential for abuse. By contrast, drugs targeting delta opioid receptors in the peripheral nervous system rather than the brain and spinal cord produce fewer side effects in animals and have a much lower abuse potential. However, delta opioid receptors in peripheral tissues only become activated in the presence of inf...

The findings call into question the designation of e-cigarettes as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) and suggest that the recent spike in the popularity of e-cigarettes among this age group doesn't signal a 'nicotine epidemic' as feared, conclude the researchers. It is widely assumed that teen vapers are vaping nicotine, so in a bid to find out exactly what substances they are vaping, the researchers quizzed almost 15,000 students about their vaping experiences as part the 2015 Monitoring the Future Survey -- an annual, nationally representative study of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students. Some 3837 of the students had vaped at some poin t, and of those who had vaped within the past month, 1701 had done so at least once; 1085 had done so up to five times; and 616 had done so more than half a dozen times. Among those who had ever vaped "just flavoring" was by far the most commonly vaped substance at last use for around two thirds of students acros...

Whether you want to know about the safety of the devices -- which create an inhalable aerosol from heated liquid nicotine and flavoring -- or how to use them to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes, physicians range greatly in their responses to patients. That's one finding from a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine who analyzed more than 500 online interactions between patients and doctors discussing e-cigarettes. The study will be published online Aug. 26 in the  American Journal of Preventive Medicine . "Researchers have previously surveyed doctors about their knowledge and attitudes concerning e-cigarettes. In this study, we were curious about actual provider behavior -- the advice doctors gave in real patient interactions," said the study's senior author, Judith Prochaska, PhD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. "Within a novel online medical forum, we were able to observe the...

Two groups of young male and female social drinkers (34 women, 30 men; 18-33 years old) were given alcohol (0.8g/kg) or a placebo. The FHP group (n= 24) had first-degree relatives with problems of alcohol misuse; the FHN group (n=40) did not. Participants completed four variants of the Five-Choice Serial Reaction Time task, which measures waiting impulsivity. Other types of impulsive behavior were also tested, using the Stop Signal Reaction Time, Information Sampling Task, Delay Discounting Questionnaire, Two-Choice Impulsivity Paradigm, and Time Estimation. The FHP drinkers showed higher waiting impulsivity levels than FHN drinkers when tested for attentional load. However, the FHP group showed less impulsive behavior on the Information Sampling Task. All participants showed alcohol-impaired inhibitory control on the Stop Signal Reaction Time test. In summary, assessing exaggerated waiting impulsivity may help identify those offspring of alcoholics who are at risk for developin...

"Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disturbance and is associated with a five-fold increased risk of ischaemic stroke," said Dr Al-Khalili. "AF is also associated with increased mortality, reduced quality of life and a higher risk of heart failure." Treatment with oral anticoagulants reduces the risk of stroke and is recommended according to the number of stroke risk factors. Risk is estimated using the CHA2DS2-VASc score which gives points for clinical risk factors. Patients with non-valvular AF under the age of 65 and a score of 0 in men or 1 in women are considered to be at low risk for ischaemic stroke, and oral anticoagulation therapy is not indicated. Dr Al-Khalili said: "Even if the risk for stroke is low, it is not negligible, and a number of such 'low risk' patients do present with ischaemic stroke in clinical practice and in patient registers." The objective of this study was to assess the incidence and pred...

The discovery is now published in the number-one ranked psychiatric journal from the Nature Publishing Group, and could mean completely new possibilities for treating alcoholism. "We've worked hard for this. The enzyme, PRDM2 , has previously been studied in cancer research, but we didn't know that it has a function in the brain," says Markus Heilig, professor of psychiatry and head of the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN) at Linköping University. He and his research group are linking together research into alcoholism and other addictive illnesses with advanced brain research. It has long been suspected that people with alcohol dependence have impaired function in the frontal lobes of the brain, but the underlying biological mechanisms have not been known. The research team behind the paper, which includes researchers from both Linköping University and University of Miami, is the first to identify this molecular mechanism. If frontal functio...

The supply of alcohol craving could also be a pea-sized construction deep inside the correct facet of the mind, based on scientists on the Indiana College College of Drugs. Utilizing two completely different sorts of superior mind imaging methods (PET and fMRI), the researchers in contrast the outcomes of giving beer drinkers a style of their favourite beer versus a sports activities drink. After tasting the beer the members reported elevated need to drink beer, whereas the sports activities drink didn't provoke as a lot need for beer. The mind scans confirmed that the beer taste induced extra exercise in each frontal lobes and in the correct ventral striatum of the themes' brains than did the sports activities drink. Credit score: B. Oberlin and D. Kareken, Indiana College College of Drugs In case you actually desire a drink proper now, the supply of your craving could also be a pea-sized construction deep inside the correct facet of your mind, based on scienti...