Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 30, Issue 3, March 2005, Pages 557-566
Addictive Behaviors

Depression vulnerability, cigarette smoking, and the serotonin transporter gene

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2004.08.005Get rights and content

Abstract

People with current or past depression are more likely to have been smokers at some point in their lives. Smokers with depression histories are also less likely to quit. Attempts to understand this relationship are important insofar as they can help treatment efficacy for this group of smokers. Prior research indicates that different genetic variations affect the relationship between smoking and neuroticism. This study examined whether people with a short serotonin transporter genotype would likewise show a stronger relationship between depression vulnerability and smoking behavior than those with the long genotype. Although depression vulnerability was associated with smoking behaviors, genotype did not significantly affect this relationship. Discussion centered on possible reasons for varying results across conceptually similar studies.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants (N=487, 279 women and 208 men) ranged in age from 18 to 90 (mean=34.98 years). The majority of participants were Caucasian (74%), while remaining participants were African American (11%), Asian American (7%), or “other” race (3%) or not reported. Five percent were of Hispanic ethnicity.

Subjects were recruited through advertisements requesting sibling pairs to participate in research on genetics, personality, and health-related behaviors. Participants were not screened for smoking

Sample characteristics

Participants were classified according to their smoking status as current everyday smokers (n=81), who had smoked more than 100 cigarettes and continue to smoke daily, current some day smokers (n=29), who had smoked more than 100 cigarettes and now smoke on some but not all days of the month, former smokers (n=100), who had been regular smokers but had quit, and never smokers (n=275), who had smoked 100 or fewer cigarettes in their lifetimes. Descriptive data on nicotine dependence, smoking

Discussion

Our results were generally consistent with previous research on the relations between depression vulnerability and smoking. As depression proneness or severity of worst lifetime depression symptoms increased, participants were more likely to have ever smoked, more likely to currently smoke, and more likely to report smoking as a way of reducing negative affect, though these results did not hold for smoking cessation, smoking rate, or severity of nicotine dependence. Contrary to our main

Acknowledgements

This article was based on the dissertation research of the first author. The research was supported by an Individual Research Training Award from the National Cancer Institute. Preparation of the article was supported by a doctoral dissertation fellowship from American University.

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1

She is now at the Department of Psychiatry of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.

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