Learning to appreciate nicotine

A nicotine metabolite once thought to be inactive, cotinine, in fact supports learning and memory by amplifying the action of a primary chemical messenger involved in both, according to a piece in science20.com quoting a new study.

The new findings apparently indicate cotinine makes brain receptors more sensitive to lower levels of the messenger acetylcholine, which are typical in Alzheimer’s, and may boost effectiveness, at least for a time, of existing therapies for Alzheimer’s and possibly other memory and psychiatric disorders.

“This is the first hint of what the mechanism of the metabolite cotinine might be,” said Dr. Alvin V. Terry, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and corresponding author of the study in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

The full story is at: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/nicotine_supports_learning_and_memory-153308.