Smoking Tied to Memory Impairment in Patients With Schizophrenia

the Psychiatry Advisor take:

Smoking may play a role in working memory impairment in people with schizophrenia.

Junghee Lee, PhD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues analyzed the Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia study (COGS-2) for smoking status among patients, types of antipsychotic medication, and history of substance as moderators for working memory impairment in schizophrenia.

A total of 1,377 patients which schizophrenia and 1,037 health control completed a task known as the latter-number span to test participants ability to repeat letters and number in the order they were initially presented to them.

Overall, those with schizophrenia didn’t perform as well at the task compared to the control group, the researchers reported in Schizophrenia Research. In addition, smokers had greater memory impairments compared to non-smokers.

Working memory and community functioning was also stronger among non-smokers overall. However, have a history of substance abuse did not impact working memory impairment.

“The greater impairment in smokers may reflect added burden of smoking on general health or that patients with greater deficits are more likely to smoke,” the researchers concluded.