Nicotine increases alcohol self-administration in non-dependent male smokers.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

This study sought to determine how nicotine delivered by tobacco smoke influences alcohol intake in humans using a double-blind placebo controlled repeated measures design.

Why It Was Studied

Alcohol and tobacco are commonly co-administered, yet little is known about the effects of acute nicotine administration on alcohol consumption in humans.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers and adults, men only.

Throughout the session, subjects could earn units of their preferred alcoholic beverage and glasses of water using a progressive-ratio (PR) task.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) could be set against what happens without it.

During two randomized 120 min sessions 15 male occasional smokers smoked four nicotine-containing or four de-nicotinized cigarettes at 30 min intervals.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Alcohol Drinking, Analysis of Variance, Nicotine, Self Administration and Smoking.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Its findings take up roughly 3 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2006 (Drug and alcohol dependence), a journal based in Ireland.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.