Nicotine Drug May Benefit Dementia Patients

Nicotine, considered to be having toxic properties and a strong risk of addiction can actually help dementia patients. A new research has shown that nicotine can increase learning power, memory retention and even attention span. The research work will be presented to a Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Conference in Geneva.

Dementia is basically a disease affecting brain, due to which memory, attention, language and problem solving abilities go down. In the advanced stages, the patient might even forget the time, place where he is and his own identity.

The experiment, which has been conducted by a team at King’s College London, revealed the positive effects of nicotine on rats. Though the effect was not much but nicotine did boost the animals’ ability to perform a task accurately.

The average correct response of the animals to the stimuli was found to be 80%. When administered nicotine, the accuracy rate shot up by 5%. However, when their attention was diverted the animals’ success rate fell to 55%. In this case too, nicotine helped in bringing it to 85%.

The research team studied how proteins on the surface of cells respond to nicotine. They learned that there are very slight biochemical differences in the way nicotine activates the brain which ultimately leads to addiction. But the King’s team is of the view that with this discovery it will become easier to find out agents which charge the brain for a much longer period of time.

Lead researcher Professor Ian Stolerman said, “Nicotine, like many other drugs, has multiple effects, some of which are harmful, whereas others maybe beneficial.” He added that it is a possibility that in near future such compounds are devised which have only the beneficial effects of nicotine and not the toxic ones. But he did agree that nicotine can make a difference in the condition of dementia patients.

Professor Clive Ballard of the Alzheimer’s Society said, “Although nicotine has therapeutic qualities, when it is absorbed through smoking, the health risks outweigh the benefits.” Hr further added that smoking can increase the risk of vasculardefine dementia and pose a number of other health problems.

So, smoking in order to get nicotine in your body is actually not a good option. Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust says that the best way to keep dementia at bay is to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly.