A new study has found a link between psychosis and smoking. In a study published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry on Friday, they found out that daily tobacco use which has been long linked to cardiovascular diseases could also contribute to mental illness.
Researchers from King's College London suggest that smokers are more likely to develop the disorder even when they are in a younger age. They were able to analyze 61 separate studies that suggest that the nicotine in cigarette smoke can affect the brain, reports BBC News.
However, previous studies have shown that smoking has been linked to schizophrenia. However, it was said that patients who have schizophrenia are more likely to smoke to ease the distress of hearing voices or having hallucinations. But when the researchers looked into the data involving 14,555 smokers and 273,162 non-smokers from 61 studies between 1980 and 2014, they found out that 57 percent of people who were first diagnosed with psychosis were already smokers.
"People with first episodes of psychosis were three times more likely to be smokers," said in a statement from King's College London's Department of Psychosis Studies as reported by CTV News. "The researchers also found that daily smokers developed psychotic illness around a year earlier than non-smokers," they added.
They therefore theorized that the changes in the brain's dopamine system could provide answers to the relationship between the two. Dopamine is a chemical neurotransmitter in the brain that aids in the control of the brain's reward and pleasure centers.
They added, "Excess dopamine is the best biological explanation we have for psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. It is possible that nicotine exposure, by increasing the release of dopamine, causes psychosis to develop."
In summary, the findings of their study entailed that 57% of people with psychosis were already smokers when they had their first psychotic episode, daily smokers were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as non-smokers and smokers developed schizophrenia a year earlier on average.
