Sahara Care Blog > Care > Scientists warn that smoking may play a role in triggering schizophrenia

Scientists warn that smoking may play a role in triggering schizophrenia

Posted on by

A research team at King’s College London have conducted a study that has enabled them to come to the conclusion that smokers are more likely to develop schizophrenia, and at a younger age.

They analysed 61 separate studies which suggest that nicotine, contained in cigarette smoke, could be a factor responsible for altering the brain, though they have called for more research to support their findings.

The link between smoking and psychosis has been acknowledged for a long time.

However, up until this study, schizophrenia patients were considered as being more likely to smoke simply because they used cigarettes as a form of self-medication to calm themselves and handle hearing voices or having hallucinations.

The team analysed data involving 14,555 smokers and 273,162 non-smokers.

Interestingly, 57 per cent of people with psychosis were already smokers when they had their first psychotic episode.

Daily smokers, meanwhile, were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as non-smokers, therefore highlighting a link between a higher rate of smoking and schizophrenia development.

Dr James MacCabe, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s, said: “It’s very difficult to establish causation [with this style of study], what we’re hoping that this does is really open our eyes to the possibility that tobacco could be a causative agent in psychosis, and we hope this will then lead to other research and clinical trials that would help to provide firmer evidence.”

Schizophrenia normally occurs in approximately one in every 100 people, but this could be increased to two in every 100 among smokers.

Prof Michael Owen, the director of the Institute of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University, said the researchers had made a “pretty strong case” that smoking may increase the risk of schizophrenia.

He added: “The fact is that it is very hard to prove causation without a randomised trial, but there are plenty of good reasons already for targeting public health measures very energetically at the mentally ill.”