By Imogen Howse via SWNS
The female sex hormone estrogen may be the reason women are more likely to be addicted to nicotine than men, a new study has found.
Data suggests that women generally become dependent on nicotine after less exposure than men – and then struggle more with quitting.
Researchers from the University of Kentucky decided to investigate this disparity among smokers – and soon discovered that it may have something to do with hormones.
The team, led by Ph.D. student Sally Pauss, found that estrogen induces the expression of olfactomedins, a type of protein involved in the brain’s processing of reward and addiction.
Nicotine has been proven to suppress olfactomedins – which means the interaction between estrogen, nicotine, and olfactomedin in women may be the reason they struggle more with addiction.
Pauss said she hopes the new revelations, published in the journal ‘American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’, will open doors for new treatment possibilities which will hopefully help women stop smoking.
“Our work hoped to understand what makes women more susceptible to nicotine use disorder, in order to reduce the gender disparity in treating addiction to nicotine,” she explained.
“Our findings have the potential to better the lives and health of women struggling with substance misuse.
“If we can confirm that estrogen drives nicotine seeking and consumption through olfactomedins, we can design drugs that might block that effect by targeting the altered pathways.
“Hopefully, these drugs would make it easier for women to quit nicotine.”
The research team used large sequencing datasets of estrogen-induced genes to identify which ones have a hormone function in the brain.
They found that only one class of genes met these criteria – those coding for olfactomedins – which prompted them to perform a series of tests to better understand the interactions between olfactomedins, estrogen, and nicotine.
Results of the tests, conducted with human uterine cells and rats, suggested that estrogen’s activation of olfactomedins — which is suppressed when nicotine is present — might serve as ‘a feedback loop’ for driving nicotine addiction processes.
“It is possible it does this by activating areas of the brain’s reward circuitry, such as the nucleus accumbens,” Pauss explained.
The next steps for the team will be to conduct further studies that definitively determine whether estrogen contributes to nicotine addiction.
Researchers also want to better understand how olfactomedin-regulated signaling pathways work, particularly in relation to how they drive nicotine consumption.
Pauss said that this knowledge will be helpful for women everywhere, but particularly for those taking estrogen in the form of the contraceptive pill or via hormone replacement therapy.
“This is because, if our findings are proven, these things could increase a woman’s risk of becoming addicted to nicotine,” she said.
Pauss unveiled her research, overseen by Professor Terry Hinds, at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in San Antonio.
