Smoking Is More Deleterious To Health Than Expected

Smokers incur damage to their brain themselves, say scientists from Edinburgh University and McGill University. The cortex of the brain is thin in smokers than non-smokers, say the researchers. The association of cancer, premature aging, Alzheimer’s, lung, heart and gum diseases with smoking has already been established. The effects of smoking on brain appear to be more deleterious than other reported diseases by far.

Cortex, the outer layer of the brain, is responsible for the cognitive functionalities such as memory, critical thinking, reasoning, language and perception. The researchers obtained health data and MRI scans of 260 women and 224 men aged around 73 who were once smokers or smoked currently. MRI brain scans of people were used in analysing images as well as to prepare statistical models to exploit the link between smokers and effects of their smoking habit in the cortex of the brain.

Professor Ian Deary from the University of Edinburgh said that it was important to know what is associated with brain health in aged people. A link between thinning grey matter in some regions of the brain and smoking could be established as the result of the study, said the researcher. The study also suggests that giving up on smoking could help smokers regain cortical thickness in some regions, though further studies to acquire knowledge on the same are required, said the investigator.

Dr Sherif Karama, assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill University, said that cortical thickness in subjects who quit smoking seemed to improve every year, though the process was slow and incomplete. She also added that, smokers should be informed that prolonged smoking will lead to cognitive deterioration. People who gave up smoking well in advance had a thicker cortex than those who quit smoking recently, noted the researchers.

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