REDUCTION IN CORTICAL IMP-SPET TRACER UPTAKE WITH RECENT CIGARETTE CONSUMPTION IN A YOUNG GROUP OF HEALTHY-MALES

Functional brain imaging techniques are being used increasingly to inf er disturbances in brain function in various neuropsychiatric disorder s, but the specificity of such findings is not always clear, We retros pectively examined the effects of one possible confound - cigarette sm oking - on cortical uptake of iodine-123 iodoamphetamine (IMP) using s ingle-photon emission tomographic imaging in a young (mean age = 35 ye ars) healthy group of male controls divided according to their smoking history. Subjects who had never smoked (n = 17), or those with a hist ory of smoking but no recent smoking (n = 8), had equivalent and signi ficantly higher mean cortical uptake of IMP than subjects with a histo ry of smoking and who were current smokers (n = 8). There were no diff erences in the cortical distribution of IMP, Our results indicate that cigarette smoking has an acute effect on global cerebral blood flow. This potential confound must be considered before abnormalities in cor tical tracer uptake are attributed to some neuropsychiatric disorder o f interest.