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LONDON: Scientists attempting to
create a nicotine pill to treat Alzheimer’s disease have suggested that smoking
can help boost memory and concentration.
Nicotine has long been
known to have a stimulating effect on the brain. However, the deadly side
effects of cancer, stroke and heart disease, mean its benefits have been largely
set aside by medical research.
Now researchers, who hope to develop
drugs which copy the active ingredients in tobacco without causing heart
disease, cancer, stroke or addiction, discovered that nicotine can boost the
intelligence and recall ability of animals in laboratory experiments.
The researchers, who plan to present their latest findings at the
Forum of European Neuroscience in Geneva, hope that the new drugs, which will be
available in five years, may have fewer side effects than existing medicines for
dementia.
However, the scientists stressed the new treatment at best
will only give patients a few extra months of independent life instead of fully
freeing them of Alzheimer’s disease.
“The substances that we call
drugs have, in the majority of cases, do have a mixture of beneficial and
harmful effects and nicotine no exception to this,” Professor Ian Stoleman of
Britain’s King’s College was quoted as saying by the
Mail online.
Researchers
led by Prof Stolerman studied how nicotine alters the brain’s circuitry to boost
concentration and memory. In his study, he showed that the concentration power
in rats went up by 5 per cent when injected with nicotine, the report said.
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