SMOKE, BOOZE CRAVINGS LINKED

Young Males Most Susceptible To Addiction, Study Suggests

TORONTO - There may be a common genetic vulnerability to combined
nicotine and alcohol dependence in men, according to a new study
published in today's edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The study suggests males, as teenagers and young adults, may
genetically be prone to dependence on nicotine and alcohol.

"People in their teens are especially vulnerable," said William True,
lead author of the study and a professor of public health at St. Louis
University Health Sciences Centre. The journal is one of the
publications of the Journal of the American Medical
Association.

"It could be that the genetic vulnerabilities are especially
heightened during that developmental period because developmentally,
adolescents are changing so much."

The study suggests that if a male is vulnerable to dependency on
alcohol, he may also be vulnerable to dependency on nicotine, and vice
versa, said True.

"We do know that smoking is very prevalent among dependent drinkers,"
said True. "We've seen for a long time that these two co-occur. We've
also seen people who are in alcohol treatment who are heavy smokers
seem to have a harder time quitting drinking."

For teens and young adult males, who may be genetically vulnerable,
drinking and smoking "awakens in them a desire to drink more," said
True. "If they're susceptible, and they start to drink, there's a
high risk of becoming dependent (on alcohol)."

A total of 3,356 male-male twin-pair members in a U.S. twin registry
were studied in 1992. Half of those (50.9 per cent) in the study group
who were diagnosed as nicotine dependent were also diagnosed as
dependent on alcohol, while 20.8 per cent of those without a nicotine
dependence were dependent on alcohol.

The significance of the results could help prevent excessive use of
these strong and addictive substances, and improve alcohol addiction
treatments, said True.

"We know kids are going to experiment but to prevent excessive use of
it, you just need to know how dangerous it is and that the risk of
becoming dependent are very high," said True, adding while there has
been speculation dependency on both substances are genetically linked,
there are few studies.

People who start smoking or drinking later in life are not as
vulnerable, said True, and those who start smoking or drinking when
they're younger have a harder time quitting than people who start when
they're older.

It's typical for alcohol-treatment clinicians to "feel that it's
enough to deal with the alcohol and tend not to worry very much about
smoking. Maybe effective treatment requires attention to both," said
True.

Women were not included in the study, and there is no proof the
results relate to women, said True.