The study's basic research will determine how families transmit nicotine dependence, particularly the genetic and environmental components of nicotine addiction.
You smoke. Your mom smokes. Her father smokes. Before long, you may learn why.
A study led by Brown researchers is collecting evidence from three generations of hundreds of families to determine what clan, childhood and lifetime factors govern smoking behavior.
The researchers, based in the Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, recently received a five-year $11.9-million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to conduct both a basic and applied study of smokers. Their project is titled "Nicotine Dependence: Risk and Recovery over Generations."
The study's basic research will determine how families transmit nicotine dependence, particularly the genetic and environmental components of nicotine addiction. The applied research will examine the value and usefulness of a smoking cessation program designed to break the generations-long cycle of nicotine addiction.
"By studying three generations, we want to learn the reasons why people smoke through the course of a lifespan, why some kids try it and grow out of it, and why others continue to smoke," said David Abrams, the study's principal investigator and the center's director. "We also want to describe the basic science of smoking, including how genes and environment interact to transmit susceptibility to becoming addicted to nicotine.
"This is a transdisciplinary collaboration to unravel some of mysteries of why some people smoke and why they can't quit," Abrams said. "We would like to gain new knowledge that will help develop better prevention, treatment and policies to reduce tobacco use - the nation's leading preventible cause of premature death and disease burden." Tobacco-related disease causes more than 450,000 deaths each year, including 170,000 cancer deaths.
Initial subjects for the project come from 3,089 women enrolled in the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, conducted by Brown researchers since 1959. The study will also follow children born to these women between 1959 and 1964, and the children's offspring, many of whom are teen-agers.
"To help us understand more deeply the vulnerability to smoking, for example, we'll examine whether a pregnant women smoked and what affect that may have had on her developing fetus," said Abrams, who is also a professor of psychiatry and human behavior.
The effort involves close to 50 researchers at Brown, Harvard and Yale. Abrams hopes the grant is the first step toward a 10- to 20-year study of smokers, which would enable researchers to track children into adulthood and middle-aged adults into their senior years. "The human lifespan perspective will help us understand fully human nicotine dependence from the basic mechanisms to applied interventions," he said.
The grant is the largest ever awarded to the 20-year-old center, which is part of the School of Medicine, based at The Miriam Hospital, and a member of the Lifespan academic medical center.
"One of the most exciting aspects of the award is that Brown will be collaborating its research endeavors with both Harvard and Yale universities," said U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, who announced the grant. "This could be the start of a New England regional effort for tobacco research."
The grant was one of seven awarded to academic institutions by the NCI, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or both, to create Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers to study tobacco use and new ways to combat it and its consequences. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pledged to provide additional funds.