A study conducted by researchers in the United States found that smoking causes a decrease in brain tissue, and while quitting smoking can stop this damage, it cannot restore the damaged brain tissue.
The study was published in the American journal Biopsychiatry Global Open Science. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine and other institutions in St. Louis said in ** that many studies have only focused on the damage of smoking to the heart and lungs, but ignored the damage to the brain, and the new study has found a direct association between smoking behavior and brain damage, which can help explain why smokers face a higher risk of age-related cognitive deterioration and Alzheimer's disease.
Both brain volume and smoking behavior are known to be genetically involved. To understand the relationship between genes, brain and behaviour, the researchers analysed brain volume, daily smoking behaviour and smoking-related genes of more than 30,000 people in a UK biomedical database, and grouped the three data into pairs.
It was found that each pair of factors was shown to be related. The association between daily smoking behavior and brain volume depends on the amount of cigarettes smoked, i.e., the more a person smokes per day, the smaller their brain volume becomes.
Eventually, the researchers came to the conclusion by using a statistical method known as mediation analysis that carrying a gene associated with smoking causes a person to smoke more easily, and that the more you smoke, the smaller your brain volume becomes.
Researchers believe that smoking and aging are the two main factors that lead to brain atrophy, and that this damage is irreversible, and quitting smoking can avoid further damage to brain volume, thereby reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease, for example.
**: Xinhua News Agency