Cigarette smoking in male patients with chronic schizophrenia in a Chinese population: prevalence and relationship to clinical phenotypes.

The high prevalence of smoking in schizophrenia of European background may be related to smoking's reducing clinical symptoms and medication side effects. Because smoking prevalence and its associations with clinical phenotypes are less well characterized in Chinese than European patients with schizophrenia, we assessed these smoking behaviors using clinician-administered questionnaires and the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) in 776 Chinese male schizophrenia and 560 control subjects. Patients also were rated on the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS), the Simpson and Angus Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale (SAES), and the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS). We found that the schizophrenia patients had a higher lifetime incidence of smoking (79% vs 63%), were more likely to be heavy smokers (61% vs 31%), and had lower smoking cessation rates (4% vs 9%) (all p0.05) than the non-smoking patients. These results suggest that Chinese males with schizophrenia smoke more frequently than the general population. Further, smokers with schizophrenia may display fewer negative symptoms and possibly less parkinsonism than non-smokers with schizophrenia.