Postural Stability in Cigarette Smokers and During Abstinence from Alcohol

Abstract

Background Static postural instability is common in alcohol dependent individuals (ALC). Chronic alcohol consumption has deleterious effects on the neural and perceptual systems subserving postural stability. However, little is known about the effects of chronic cigarette smoking on postural stability and its changes during abstinence from alcohol. Methods A modified Fregly ataxia battery was administered to a total of 115 smoking (sALC) and non-smoking ALC (nsALC) and to 74 smoking (sCON) and non-smoking light/non-drinking controls (nsCON). Subgroups of abstinent ALC were assessed at 3 time points (approximately 1 week, 5 weeks, 34 weeks of abstinence from alcohol); a subset of nsCON was re-tested at 40 weeks. We tested if cigarette smoking affects postural stability in CON and in ALC during extended abstinence from alcohol, and we used linear mixed effects modeling to measure change across time points within ALC. Results Chronic smoking was associated with reduced performance on the Sharpened Romberg eyes-closed task in abstinent ALC at all three time points and in CON. The test performance of nsALC increased significantly between 1 and 32 weeks of abstinence, whereas the corresponding increases for sALC between 1 and 35 weeks was non-significant. With long-term abstinence from alcohol, nsALC recovered into the range of nsCON and sALC recovered into the range of sCON. Static postural stability decreased with age and correlated with smoking variables but not with drinking measures. Conclusions Chronic smoking was associated with reduced static postural stability with eyes closed and with lower increases of postural stability during abstinence from alcohol. Smoking cessation in alcohol dependence treatment may facilitate recovery from static postural instability during abstinence.

Improvement of balance in young adults by a sound component at 100 Hz in music

“…In this study, all postural stability parameters in female subjects were significantly better than those in male subjects, although the results of previous studies regarding the influence of gender on postural stability were inconsistent 23 – 25 . Smokers had significantly larger surface areas with both eyes open and eyes closed than those in non-smokers as shown in previous studies 26 , 27 . We then focused on the relative contribution of 100 Hz sound and further determined the relative contributions (%) of each confounder as well as the groups categorized by sound levels at 100 Hz in logistic regression models using Pseudo R 2 values (Table S1 ).…”

Time for Cigarette Smoke Exposure Chambers?

“…The authors observed dramatic increases in nicotine self‐administration by NHP while withdrawn from alcohol after a long period of self‐administration of both substances. This is in contrast to findings in human smokers, who generally do not change tobacco consumption during substance abuse treatment (McClure et al., ) or extended abstinence from alcohol (Schmidt et al., ). The observed increases in nicotine consumption with alcohol abstinence may be unique to the animal model, as the animals had experienced no drug exposure at all before the experiments, whereas their human counterparts over the years have learned to titrate their own nicotine exposure within a relatively narrow range, which they do not even deviate from substantially during substance abstinence.…”

Cerebellar Morphometry and Cognition in the Context of Chronic Alcohol Consumption and Cigarette Smoking

“…In prior ataxia research involving largely the same ALC and CON participants of this study (89% of the ALC and 92% of the CON participants studied in this manuscript), we showed that chronic smoking was associated with reduced performance on the Sharpened-Romberg eyes-closed task in both groups (Schmidt et al, 2014). Since this postural stability task is a test of cerebellar integrity, we were not surprised to find cerebellar structural deficits related to chronic smoking.…”

“…More recently, smaller bilateral cerebellar gray matter volumes have been reported in smokers (Franklin et al, 2014;Vnukova et al, 2017). Lastly, 3-week-abstinent alcohol-dependent treatment seekers (ALC) who smoke (sALC; many of whom contributed to this cerebellar structural analysis) showed poorer performance on postural stability tasks compared to their nonsmoking counterparts (nsALC; Schmidt et al, 2014), an effect that could be mediated by cerebellar structural abnormalities (Vassar and Rose, 2014).…”