Measuring nicotine dependence among high-risk adolescent smokers

Ventral Striatum/Nucleus Accumbens Activation to Smoking-Related Pictorial Cues in Smokers and Nonsmokers: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

“…Seventy-eight percent of smokers were of European ancestry compared with 100% of nonsmokers, and 78% of smokers had a college education compared with 100% of non-smokers (for both comparisons: Χ 2 [1] = 2.78, p = .1). Amongst smokers, the mean score of the Fagerström Test of Nicotine Dependence was 4.7 (SD = 1.7), which is similar to reported population means of regular smokers (Benowitz 1999;Heatherton et al 1991;Prokhorov et al 1996), mean number of cigarettes per day was 18.3 (SD = 8.7) and the mean exhaled carbon monoxide indicated overnight abstinence (mean = 2.9 ppm, SD = 2.9) ( Whole brain group analysis using mixed effects and corrected cluster statistics (Z > 2.3, cluster p < .05) demonstrated bilateral activation in smokers in three large clusters with centers of gravity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and occipital cortex (Table 1 and Figure 1). Within the ACC/OFC cluster were local maxima in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (8, 56, −12; zstatistic 3.60), and ACC (−6, 50, 0; Z-statistic 3.73).…”

Immediate and six-month effects of Project Ex Russia: A smoking cessation intervention pilot program

“…Last Month cigarette smoking was assessed with the item asking "How many times have you used cigarettes in the last month (30 days) -or on an average day", with open-ended answers collecting times of smoking (e.g., Sussman, Dent, & Lichtman, 2001). The level of nicotine dependence was assessed with the 8-item modified Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire (mFTQ) (Chen et al, 2002;Prokhorov, 1996).…”

Is the severity of adolescent conduct disorder associated with the level of nicotine dependence?

“…Information on current smoking habits and the level of ND was collected by means of the 7-item modified Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire (mFTQ) for adolescents [11], the reliability and validity of which have been demonstrated previously [16,17]. The items in the mFTQ assess the subject's smoking rate, frequency of inhalation, interval between waking up and the first cigarette, level of unwillingness to give up the first cigarette in the morning, difficulty of refraining from smoking in places where it is forbidden, smoking despite medical illness, and smoking more during the first 2 hours than during the rest of the day.…”

“…Following Prokhorov et al (1996), a sum score of 6 or higher was considered to represent a high level of ND in the adolescents.…”

“…As far as we know, there have been no studies to date investigating these CD subscales in relation to adolescent ND. The main goals of the current work were 1) to study whether the number of CD symptoms is associated with the level of ND as measured by the modified Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire (mFTQ) [11], 2) to find out whether the type of CD (group type, solitary aggressive type vs. undifferentiated type, and childhood vs. adolescent onset type) is connected with the level of adolescent ND, 3) to investigate whether gender and psychiatric comorbidity among CD adolescents affects the risk of developing ND, and 4) to examine how various CD symptom subscales are associated with the level of ND.…”