Nicotine, diseases nAChRs implicated

Like mAChRs, nAChRs have been implicated in the etiology of ALheimef s disease and related dementias as well as in gastrointestinal and cardiovascular disorders. Nicotine has high abuse potential and is the primary component in reinforcing smoking behaviors. Nicotine patches have been... 

Abstract The existence of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChRs) expression in the brain was discovered 30 years ago. Although the relevance of neuronal nAChRs at the time of their discovery was debated, it is now clear that nAChRs are expressed throughout the brain where they mainly serve a modulatory role. Neuronal nAChRs increasingly have become of interest due to the many observations that various nAChR subtypes exhibit abnormal expression or function in a wide assortment of neurological diseases. In this review, the putative role of nAChRs in brain disease is discussed in several broad categories (1) diseases associated with a loss of nAChRs, (2) diseases associated with innate differences in the expression of nAChRs, (3) diseases associated with genetic variability in genes that code for nAChR subunit proteins, and (4) diseases in which nAChRs are implicated based on the observation that nicotine has a therapeutic effect. 

Diseases Where nAChRs Are Implicated by Therapeutic Effects of Nicotine. 768... 

The interest in neuronal nAChRs has increased in the past few years and a great number of papers were published on the establishment of the physiology of nAChRs including the determination of type, composition, and number of nAChRs present in different tissues, as well as on their pharmacological properties. The need to understand the functional implications of nAChRs in the human brain arises from several known facts, namelly, the reduced number of nAChRs seen in both Alzheimer s and Parkinson s diseases, the importance of cholinergic defects in particular forms of human epilepsy and the decreased number of hippocampal nicotinic receptors seen in postmorten brain tissue of schizophrenia patients. The presence of nAChRs in lung carcinoma cells and the potential role of nicotine in learning and memory was also reported. 

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