Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Research Article

Effect of Smoking in Cognition among Male Medical Students

¹Department of Basic and Clinical Physiology, B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS), Nepal

²Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, BPKIHS, Nepal

³Department of Psychiatry, BPKIHS, Nepal

⁴B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Nepal

*Corresponding Author:

Karishma Rajbhandari Pandey
Assistant Professor, Department of Basic and Clinical Physiology
BPKIHS, Dharan, Nepal
Tel: +9779841377749; +09779862124700
E-mail: karishma@bpkihs.edu

Received date: February 23, 2017; Accepted date: April 03, 2017; Published date: April 10, 2017

Citation: Pandey KR, Panday DR, Sapkota N, Dhami A, Sarraf A, et al. (2017) Effect of Smoking in Cognition among Male Medical Students. J Addict Res Ther 8:316. doi:10.4172/2155-6105.1000316

Copyright: © 2017 Pandey KR, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction: Smokers claim that smoking increases their concentration, alertness, and overall mental performance. On the contrary, evidences point at gradual cognitive deterioration in smokers. Cognitive deterioration can be assessed by Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA). Objective: To compare the cognitive status in smoker and non-smoker medical students. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional comparative study was done in 46 male medical students with normal cardiac and pulmonary functions (23 smokers and 23 non-smokers, FTND was used to establish smoking status) at Pulmonary Function Lab in the Department of Basic and Clinical Physiology, BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences. Pulmonary function tests (PFT) were measured to exclude pulmonary function defect. Blood Pressure (SBP and DBP) was used to ascertain subjects with normal and abnormal cardiac function. For cognition assessment Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA), which is a close ended questionnaire, was used. Data were expressed in median and Inter-Quartile-Range (IQR). Chi-square Test was applied to observe association between smoking and cognition (normal vs. impaired cognition). Results: All baseline variables viz., anthropometric (Age and BMI), cardiovascular (Diastolic and Systolic Blood Pressures) and pulmonary function (VC, FEV1 and FEV1/FVC) were comparable between smokers and nonsmokers except age. Greater percentage of smokers compared to non-smokers (48% vs. 22%) had mild cognitive decline as measured by MoCA score. However, the finding was statistically non-significant (0.063). Conclusion: Low nicotine-dependent male medical students with normal pulmonary and cardiac functions, showed mild but insignificant cognitive decline as measured by MoCA score.

Keywords