The effect of nicotine and attention allocation on physiological and self-report measures of induced anxiety in PTSD: a double-blind placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Rates of smoking among populations with psychiatric disorders are more than twice as high as among the general population, yet there are few controlled studies of the mechanisms of this relationship.

This trial examined the effect of nicotine by way of cigarette smoking on both self-report and autonomic parameters of anxiety among individuals with PTSD who were also heavy smokers.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Half of the participants were randomized to an anxiety-eliciting condition, whereas the other half were assigned to a condition of neutral emotional content.

Within each of these conditions, participants were randomized into a nicotine condition (high-yield nicotine cigarette) or a placebo condition (denicotinized cigarette).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Analysis of Variance, Anxiety, Attention, Electromyography, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists and Self Disclosure.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2007 (Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology), a journal based in United States.

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