Eliminating smoking in addiction treatment programs may have a clinical downside: research shows that nicotine appears to improve attention and working memory among alcoholics in the early stages of recovery, Medical News Today reported Nov. 27.

However, experts noted that nicotine patches could achieve the same positive results among recovering alcoholics, who tend to have significant cognitive impairments.

"The literature on acute administration of nicotine in both animals and humans strongly suggests that nicotine is a cognitive enhancer," said researcher Sara Jo Nixon of the University of Florida. "The cognitive benefit is often observed in studies where nonsmokers are administered nicotine. Furthermore, it appears that this effect is most effectively achieved through nicotine's effects on attention processes.

"However, when considering the potentially positive effects of nicotine, it is critical that we separate the effects of nicotine from those associated with smoking or other tobacco use."

Nixon said the study showed that "alcoholics who smoked were more sensitive to the drug dose of nicotine than were community controls who also smoked. That is, when given a higher dose, alcoholics benefited from the extra amount more than controls did. Furthermore, this differential response was most obvious on the cognitive tasks which rely heavily on attentional processes."

The study appears in the December 2007 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.