Category: Rehab News

In a paper published in the journal Nature Genetics, a UNC team reported that three genetic regions were associated with the number of cigarettes smoked per day, one region was associated with smoking initiation and one variant was associated with smoking cessation.

White House and U.S. Department of Education representatives will join addiction researchers and recovery program administrators participate in nation’s first conference promoting recovery communities on college campuses.

New research finds any beneficial effect of drinking moderate amounts of alcohol on stroke may be counteracted by cigarette smoking, according to research that will be presented as part of the late-breaking science program at the American Academy of Neurology’s 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto, April 10 – 17, 2010.

In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity.

Recent studies have shown that behaviors such as happiness, obesity, smoking and altruism are “contagious” within adult social networks. In other words, your behavior not only influences your friends, but also their friends and so on. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University have taken this a step farther and found that the spread of one behavior in social networks influences the spread of another behavior, adolescent drug use.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center hope they have begun paving a new pathway in the fight against drug dependence.

Bees prefer nectar with small amounts of nicotine and caffeine over nectar that does not comprise these substances at all, a study from the University of Haifa reveals. “This could be an evolutionary development intended, as in humans, to make the bee addicted,” states Prof. Ido Izhaki, one of the researchers who conducted the study.

New research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may help more smokers keep their New Year’s resolution by helping them quit smoking. Extended use of a nicotine patch – 24 weeks versus the standard eight weeks recommended by manufacturers – boosts the number of smokers who maintain their cigarette abstinence and helps more of those who backslide into the habit while wearing the patch, according to a study which will be published in the February 2 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

The brain’s innate interest in the new and different may help trump the power of addictive drugs, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. In controlled experiments, novelty drew cocaine-treated rats away from the place they got cocaine.

Adult male monkeys exposed to cocaine while in the womb have poor impulse control and may be more vulnerable to drug abuse than female monkeys, even a decade or more after the exposure, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The findings could lead to a better understanding of human drug abuse.