Quitting smoking is a difficult task, but taking anti-inflammatory drugs might be able to assist in this journey, according to new Penn State research.

Elizabeth Corwin, assistant professor of nursing, who is in the Intercollege Physiology Program, and Laura Klein, assistant professor of biobehavorial health, conducted the study in July 2000.

The pair studied moderate to heavy smokers and non-smokers, ages 18 to 35.

The participants answered questions about their mood, appetite, fatigue levels and myalgia (or muscle aches and pains).

Also, blood was drawn from the sample to measure their cytokine levels. Cytokines, released by the body during illnesses such as influenza and the common cold, place a strain on the body and make people feel sick, Klein said.

"The cytokines are released in kind to stress," Corwin said.

The increased presence of cytokines can be treated with anti-inflammatory medicines.

Corwin and Klein said they wanted to answer two questions with their experiment.

"Our questions are: Do smokers, during nicotine withdrawal, experience similar symptoms as do people when they are sick?" Corwin said. "Are those symptoms during nicotine withdrawal related to cytokines?"

The non-smokers came to one session, and the smokers came twice.

During the second meeting, they were asked to quit smoking for one day.

"They were motivated. We paid them to quit," Corwin said.

The researchers measured the carbon dioxide levels and did more blood work.

Corwin and Klein found depression, fatigue, appetite and muscle aches

all increased with the absence of nicotine.

Klein said going through withdrawal is a shift in the body's normal rhythm and would cause some disruptions.

From the blood samples, they found that two cytokines, interleukin-1 beta and interleukin-6, might hold answers to treating some of the side effects of withdrawal.

"Both depression and body aches were shown to be significantly correlated one or both cytokines," Corwin said.

Administering drugs to increase serotonin levels in the body treats depression, but Corwin said the body might already be producing enough serotonin.

She added that more research has to be done examining the immune system in conjunction with depression.

"Nobody has implicated the immune system in the study of depression," Corwin said.

Corwin and Klein presented their findings at a gathering of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco last month.

Some of the top scientists in the nicotine and tobacco field from around the world were in attendence, Klein said.

"I think it was very well-received," she said. "People thought the research was innovative. We had a lot of requests for the paper."

Penn State's Life Sciences Consortium and the General Clinical Research Center funded the study.

Klein and Corwin are looking to follow up the original experiment with a larger sample and use anti-inflammatory drugs during smoking interventions.