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TORONTO, Mar 20, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Nicotine -- long the whipping-boy of doctors everywhere -- may prove to be beneficial for people with Alzheimer's disease, a Canadian researcher said Tuesday at a conference on dementia.
Psychologist Verner Knott of the Royal Ottawa Hospital said research in his lab shows that chewing nicotine-laced gum improves short-term memory in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's. He presented the data at a two-day meeting on biological and clinical advances in understanding dementia, organized by Toronto's Rotman Research Institute.
Knott said he wasn't recommending that people smoke in order to avoid Alzheimer's disease, because of other known health risks. But, he said, "a drug that has properties like nicotine might be a way of looking at treatment."
Neurologist Sandra Black of the University of Toronto said the finding makes sense because nicotine stimulates parts of the brain that are involved in the ability to pay attention. But she said it's too early to say how well nicotine, or other drugs like it, will work as therapy for Alzheimer's, which affects about 4 million Americans.
Knott cautioned that the study was small -- involving only 13 people -- and the effect was a subtle change in brain function that had to be measured with electrodes positioned on the scalps of the subjects.
The main result, Knott said, was a short-lived "fine-tuning" of the brain's ability to pay attention to and distinguish slight differences in sounds a few seconds apart.
Controversial earlier research has shown that smokers appear to have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, perhaps because the nicotine they inhale has a beneficial effect. But Black said one possible flaw in that research is that Alzheimer's is a disease mainly of the elderly; since smokers tend to die early, they don't get Alzheimer's as often, she said.
By MICHAEL SMITH, UPI Science News
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
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