Cognition Benefits When Schizophrenia Patients Stop Smoking
Patients with schizophrenia who stopped smoking showed significant improvement in cognitive processing speed, researchers found in a study published online in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The cohort study included 1094 patients with nonaffective psychosis, 1047 of their siblings without psychosis, and 579 healthy control subjects. Researchers looked at smoking behavior and cognitive status over a 6-year period.
At the study’s start, 66.6% of patients smoked, compared with 38.3% of siblings and 25.2% of control subjects, researchers reported.
Findings Challenge Schizophrenia Treatment Guideline
In all 3 cohorts, smoking was significantly associated with lower performance on tasks related to cognitive processing speed, working memory, and problem solving, according to Psychiatric News Alert coverage of the study. The higher the number of cigarettes smoked daily, the worse the average performance in processing speed and problem solving, researchers found.
Patients who stopped smoking during the study, however, showed significant improvements in processing speed compared with those who continued to smoke. Interestingly, such improvements were not seen with siblings and control subjects. Smoking cessation in patients was linked with a nearly 5-point gain on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale digit-symbol coding task, Psychiatric News Alert reported.
“Smoking cessation may improve processing speed in patients,” researchers concluded. They emphasized the need for more patient education on the negative impact of smoking on cognitive performance.
—Jolynn Tumolo
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