The Interplay Between Addiction to Tobacco Smoking and Sleep Quality Among Healthy Adults

Summary

Tobacco smoking is a major health problem, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality due to cancer, impaired pulmonary function, and cardiovascular diseases. Chronic nicotine consumption related to smoking may affect pulmonary function and can cause neuronal alterations leading to increased emotional distress and decreased cognitive functioning, especially when the smoker attempts to quit. These may explain the huge difficulty in quitting and the dependence on cigarettes as a means of maintaining emotional balance. The possibility that reduced sleep quality is a major negative outcome that contributes to nicotine addiction has been largely overlooked. Several studies have shown that smoking and smoking cessation disrupt sleep quality; however, the vast majority of these studies were based on subjective reports. Moreover, it is not clear to what degree disrupted sleep quality among smokers may be related to reduced pulmonary function, and to what degree reduced sleep quality contributes to the emotional cognitive distress of active and abstinent smokers and to their urge to smoke. The main hypothesis of this proposal is that smoking and early phases of smoking cessation will be associated with reduced sleep quality. This poor sleep quality will be associated with emotional and cognitive symptoms and difficulty in abstaining from tobacco smoking. Successful abstinence from smoking over time will lead to normalization of the quality of sleep.

Experiments to investigate this hypothesis will be conducted on healthy young adults addressing the following specific aims: 1) To examine physiological and psychological factors predicting reduced quality of sleep among smokers, including: poor pulmonary function, the degree of nicotine dependence, altered regulation of stress systems (HPA axis and the sympathetic nervous system), and emotional distress (anxiety and depression); 2) To explore the impact of smoking cessation on sleep quality and related symptoms. Specifically, whether smoking cessation induces fragmented sleep and poor sleep quality, and whether the diminished sleep quality can predict the magnitude of emotional and cognitive symptoms; 3) To examine whether poor sleep (before and during abstinence) can predict the level of the urge to smoke and smoking relapse among abstinent smokers; 4) To explore whether sleep quality ultimately improves following prolonged abstinence from smoking. Addressing these aims, nonsmokers and smokers will be examined before and during smoking abstinence on the following measures: quality of sleep via actigraphy and polysomnography (PSG), pulmonary function test, biological markers of stress (cortisol and α-amylase) and smoking (i.e., cotinine, the main metabolite of nicotine), and emotional and cognitive functioning via psychometric tests.

Results of this study will provide novel insight on the role of sleep in nicotine addiction. Experiments will show how reduced quality of sleep may result from chronic smoking and interfere with attempts to quit smoking. Also, the experiment will shed light on the interrelated physiological and psychological mechanisms that mediate the interplay between smoking addiction and sleep. The research will utilize a variety of powerful methods and an interdisciplinary collaboration of experts in the fields of sleep, addiction, and pulmonary medicine. It is anticipated that the results will contribute substantially to our knowledge of smoking addiction and may promote the development of effective therapeutic interventions to this major public health problem.

Conditions

• Tobacco Dependence

Interventions

OTHER

Smoking cessation

Participants are required to quit smoking

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The Max Stern Academic College Of Emek Yezreel

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

30 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-10-15

Primary Completion

2022-04-15

Completion

2022-10-15

Countries

• Israel

Study Locations