Association of depression symptom level with smoking urges, cigarette withdrawal, and smoking reinstatement: A preliminary laboratory study

Abstract

Background: Cigarette smoking urges, withdrawal, and smoking reinstatement may be especially relevant to people with elevated depression symptoms who smoke. This laboratory study aimed to assess relations between depression symptom level and smoking urges for reward and relief, cigarette withdrawal, and smoking reinstatement in people who smoke cigarettes daily during acute abstinence and while smoking as usual. Methods: Participants with low (n=51) or elevated (n=29) baseline depression symptoms underwent two counterbalanced laboratory sessions (i.e., abstinent, non-abstinent). At each session, they completed subjective measures of smoking urges for reward and relief, and withdrawal. They also completed a laboratory smoking reinstatement task measuring whether they would delay smoking and the number of cigarettes smoked. Results: The elevated depression symptom group reported significantly higher withdrawal (p=.01) and smoked more cigarettes than the low depression symptoms group during the smoking reinstatement task self-administration period at the abstinent session (p=.04).Smoking urges for reward and relief were not significantly different by depression symptom group. There were no significant interactions of depression and abstinence with any outcomes. Conclusions:As outcomes were measured at both an abstinent and non-abstinent session, findings identify factors for people with elevated depression symptoms who smoke which may drive smoking behavior and impede smoking cessation efforts. This study provides evidence that people with elevated depression symptoms who smoke may need additional/more 3 DEPRESSION, SMOKING, LAB STUDY pharmacological or behavioral smoking cessation aids targeted at reducing withdrawal and number of cigarettes smoked.

Effects of intranasal oxytocin on cigarette withdrawal and smoking in the laboratory: Differences by sex and social functioning traits.

“…Third, withdrawal symptom scores during experimental sessions were relatively low (i.e., average of 1.26 on a scale of 0-5), suggesting either a floor effect on this measure or that participants (especially those with relatively low levels of nicotine dependence) may not have experienced symptoms severe enough to benefit from pharmacological intervention. While our results indicate that 12-hr abstinence produced significant increases in withdrawal symptoms compared to baseline nonabstinent levels (indicating that experimental session values were greater than a potential floor effect), and previous studies have shown similar ranges of withdrawal symptoms during 12-to 16-hr abstinence (Hendricks & Leventhal, 2013;Leventhal et al, 2010;Tucker et al, 2022), future studies may investigate oxytocin-related effects during longer term abstinence and among a population of individuals with relatively high nicotine dependence. Finally, while a strength of the present study-compared to previous studies-is the testing of two active dose levels of oxytocin, this limited dose range likely makes it difficult to ascertain the dose-response curve of oxytocin on subjective experiences of nicotine abstinence.…”

Associations of DHEA(S) with negative and positive affect in people who smoke daily with elevated and low depression symptoms: A pilot laboratory study

“…Items are summed to determine a total score ranging from 0 to 60. As in our prior work (Pang, Tucker, D'Orazio, Weinberger, & Guillot, 2022;Tucker, et al, 2022), a binary CESD score was created for elevated depression symptoms (≥20) and low depression symptoms (<20). A meta-analysis in general populations and primary care settings found a cutoff of 20 showed better sensitivity to specificity trade-off than the generally recommended cutoff of 16 (Vilagut, Forero, Barbaglia, & Alonso, 2016).…”

Does Quitting Smoking Affect Depressive Symptoms? A Longitudinal Study Based on Treatment-Seeking Smokers with a History of Depressive Episode

“…People with depression are at higher risk of becoming smokers, and smoking seems to be associated with later depression (Fluharty et al, 2017;Sánchez-Villegas et al, 2021). Also, smokers with depression encounter more significant barriers to smoking cessation than those without depression (Ranjit et al, 2020) and show higher levels of nicotine dependence (Bainter et al, 2020), stronger urges to smoke when anticipating the relief from a negative mood state (Berlin & Singleton, 2008), higher relapse rates (Huffman et al, 2018;Zvolensky et al, 2015) and a more intense withdrawal syndrome when compared to smokers with lower levels of depressive symptomatology (Tucker et al, 2022).…”