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Sex differences in sensorimotor gating of the human startle reflex: all smoke?
N R Swerdlow1, M A Geyer, P L Hartman
1Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0804, USA. nswerdlow@ucsd.edu
Rationale:
A recent report described sex differences in the effects of nicotine use and withdrawal on prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle (PPI), but no sex differences in PPI in non-smokers.
Objective:
To determine whether previously reported male>female acoustic PPI reflect sex differences in smoking effects on PPI, rather than simple sex differences in the regulation of PPI. A retrospective analyses of >600 carefully screened normals tested over the past 12 years was completed.
Results:
Male>female acoustic PPI was detected in analyses that included: 1) all subjects; or 2) self-declared non-smokers.
Conclusions:
Sex differences in PPI cannot be accounted for by smoking history, because they are present across a large sample of non-smoking normal controls.