RSS Feed
January 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Jan. 9 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests that the
nicotine patches used by people trying to quit smoking could serve an
unexpected purpose: They appear to counteract mild memory loss in older
patients.
The research is preliminary and only involved a few dozen subjects.
There’s also the matter of expense: While they’re available over the
counter, patches may cost several dollars a day.
Still, “nicotine treatment may be a way to improve people’s symptoms
and maybe extend their ability to do all of those cognitive things we need
to do,” said study author Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Center for
Cognitive Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “We’re
hoping to pursue this with a much larger group.”
This isn’t the first time researchers have tried to analyze connections
between the brain and nicotine. In the 1980s, Newhouse and others
discovered through autopsies that the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s
disease lacked certain “receptors” that help the brain’s chemicals work
properly, he said. While their job in the brain isn’t to deal to nicotine,
these receptors do respond to it.
The experiences of smokers seem to confirm the connection between
nicotine and brain function, Newhouse said. “If people smoke a cigarette,
they will tell you they can pay attention better.”
However, it appears that nicotine isn’t a huge help if someone already
has a well-functioning ability to pay attention, he said.
In the new study, researchers recruited 74 nonsmoking seniors with mild
cognitive problems and watched what happened to 34 who received treatment
with nicotine patches (15 milligrams a day) and 33 who got placebo patches
for six months. Another seven didn’t finish the study.
The people in the study weren’t in bad enough shape to be diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s disease. However, they did have moments of memory loss
that the people around them noticed, Newhouse said.
“They might repeat themselves, tell the same thing several times over
or not remember something they’ve been told,” he explained, “or make a
mistake in calculations for their checkbook.”
Their losses in cognitive function were beyond those of normal aging,
he added.
After testing cognition and memory at the start of the study and again
at three and six months, the researchers found that those who used the
real patches did better in terms of attention and memory, although the
differences weren’t huge and their doctors didn’t notice them. The
nicotine patch group regained 46 percent of their long-term memory loss,
while the placebo patch group saw a 26 percent further decline in memory
loss. Also, “people subjectively thought they were doing better,” Newhouse
said.
The only consistent side effect was weight loss, he said, and it’s not
clear if that stabilizes over time.
The participants who got the real patches didn’t suffer withdrawal
symptoms when they went off them, Newhouse said. “There’s no worries about
becoming dependent on it or wanting to take nicotine even though you
shouldn’t take it.”
The patches seem to boost memory by affecting the brain’s chemicals and
allowing a person to pay attention more easily, he said. “Attention is
necessary for memory to work.”
However, Newhouse said he can’t recommend the nicotine treatment for
memory loss at this time. “If you want to think about it, discuss it with
your physician,” he said.
Jennifer Rusted, a professor of experimental psychology at Sussex
University in England, said the study was well done but it doesn’t address
the effectiveness of using nicotine patches in the long term. Also, Rusted
said, there’s debate about who should qualify as having mild cognitive
problems in studies like this one.
As for the idea of taking nicotine patches to keep sharp mentally, she
said that “realistically, the benefits even in this careful test were so
small as to be indiscernible in the general scheme of daily activities.
More importantly, there are many, many other ways of achieving much bigger
improvements — exercise, diet, social and cognitive engagement and
interaction.”
The study appears in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Neurology.
The researchers received federal funding for the research and the
pharmaceutical company Pfizer contributed the nicotine patches.
More information
For more about cognitive impairment, try the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
