The reason I am asking is because a large Harvard study of 6,744 veterans
indicates that vets who had a pre-existing addiction to cigarettes had
double the rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  (The study is in
New Scientist and the primary author is Karestan Koenen.)  The mechanism
is thought to be because "Nicotine stimulates some of the same
neuorbiological pahtways implicated in stress." Koenen said in an
interview by This Week magazine.  It is thought that causes the bad
experiences to have more emotional impact.
 
Have any shelters kept any numbers on this?  I suspect not, but it may
be worth considering, perhaps as an indicator of some ferret individuals
who may need an especially aware adoptive home or have a greater chance
of needing more time with rehabilitation.
 
I do not know if the components of side stream smoke are high enough
in nicotine to cause this effect or not.  Does someone here know?
 
(Certainly, people should not smoke around ferrets for health reasons;
ferrets are used in smoking studies because they are vulnerable to such
components, and another recent journal article described actual lung
cancer in ferrets.
 
> Cancer Lett. 2005 May 12; [Epub ahead of print]
>
> Induction of pulmonary neoplasia in the smoke-exposed ferret by
> 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK): A model for
> human lung cancer.
>
> Kim Y, Liu XS, Liu C, Smith DE, Russell RM, Wang XD.
>
> Nutrition and Cancer Biology Laboratory, Jean Mayer United States
> Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging
> at Tufts University, 711 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
>
> Research into dietary chemoprevention against lung carcinogenesis
> has been limited by the lack of appropriate animal models that
> closely mimic smoking-related human lung cancer. Ferrets (Mustela
> putorius furo) have been used to study the biologic activities of
> carotenoids against smoke-induced lung lesions...   )
 
-- Sukie (not a vet)
Ferret Health List co-moderator
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
FHL Archives fan
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
replacing
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org
International Ferret Congress advisor
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5067]