The short term effect of nicotine abstinence on visuospatial working memory in smoking patients with schizophrenia.

What Was Tested

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

This study aims at evaluating the effect of short-term smoking abstinence on different components of visuospatial working memory in smoker patients with schizophrenia as well as possible reversal effect of a nicotine patch.

Why It Was Studied

Patients with schizophrenia suffer from wide range of deficits in neurocognitive functions of the brain, including visuospatial working memory.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 45 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults and adults, men only.

In this trial, 45 male smoker patients with schizophrenia (Razi Hospital, Tabriz, Iran, 2010) were randomly divided into three groups.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The function of visuospatial working memory was tested by the brief visuospatial memory test-revised (BVMT-R) at the baseline and after the intervention.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Ganglionic Stimulants, Memory, Short-Term, Nicotine, Schizophrenia, Smoking, Smoking Cessation and Space Perception.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 45 patients.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2013 (Nordic journal of psychiatry), a journal based in England.

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