Nicotine dependence perpetuating tobacco smoking may be treatable by drugs acting at glutamate receptors.
Extract: By the year 2020 tobacco smoking will become the single largest health problem worldwide leading to approximately 8.4 million deaths annually. In the USA alone, tobacco smoking leads to serious illness in an estimated 8.6 million people, causing roughly 440,000 deaths annually, and approximately $157 billion in health-related economic costs. On average, smoking leads to a loss of 12 healthy years and reduces the lifespan by 8 years. Almost a quarter of the USA population are tobacco smokers. The percentage of smokers is even higher in some other countries, and there is an alarming increase of tobacco use in the developing countries. The cost of tobacco smoking to society is tremendous in terms of health problems that frequently lead to death, medical costs and human suffering. In the USA and Europe, 70% of all smokers have considered quitting smoking at least once, and 35% try to quit at least once a year. Yet only approximately 6% succeed in maintaining abstinence. Therefore, there is a great need for the discovery and development of new treatments to assist people in achieving and maintaining abstinence from tobacco smoking.
Markou
Athina
A
Department of Neuropharmacology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.