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Why Smoking and Drinking Often Go Together

posted by martyb on Sunday November 01 2015, @10:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-drink-to-that dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Past research shows that more than 85 percent of US adults who are dependent on alcohol are also dependent on nicotine, but why do the two go hand in hand?

Now, a new study with rats finds that nicotine cancels out the sleep-inducing effects of alcohol.

"We know that many people who drink alcohol also use nicotine, but we don't know why exactly that is," says Mahesh Thakkar, associate professor and director of research in the University of Missouri School of Medicine's neurology department and lead author of the study.

"We have found that nicotine weakens the sleep-inducing effects of alcohol by stimulating a response in an area of the brain known as the basal forebrain. By identifying the reactions that take place when people smoke and drink, we may be able to use this knowledge to help curb alcohol and nicotine addiction."

http://www.futurity.org/smoking-drinking-1036052-2/

[Abstract]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jnc.13219/abstract

[Source]: http://medicine.missouri.edu/news/0305.php

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @03:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @03:31PM (#257531)

    Rats metabolize alcohol differently than humans. Dosage is usually calculated to produce a certain blood alcohol level that is comparable to that of humans.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @05:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @05:13PM (#257597)

    Here is an example:

    rats in the ethanol treatment group (n = 12) were administered 3 consecutive doses of ethanol (2g/kg, i.p.) once per day for 3 days.
    [...]
    Blood ethanol concentrations were 185 ±20.7 mg/dl (mean ± SEM) at 1 hour after i.p. injection (the time of the TBI).

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120356 [plos.org]

    BAC is in g/dl, so the BAC after 2g/kg in those rats is reported to be ~0.185. Using the same conversions above, that would be 10 shots/beers in an hour. From wikipedia, 10 drinks in an hour should lead to a BAC of 0.26-0.31 for a 65 kg human. A BAC of 0.185 would correspond to 6-7 drinks. The rats may metabolize it slightly faster, but 3 g/kg is still abnormally high.

    Also, the ethanol was administered via i.p. injection for that data, while the current study injected directly into the stomach. I'm not sure what effect that would have on BAC, I missed it if they report measuring that.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content [wikipedia.org]