Characterising patterns and determinants of smoking initiation in adolescence. (360G-Wellcome-086684_Z_08_Z)

Smoking is one of the leading causes of poor health, illness and premature death. However, despite campaigns to encourage children and young adults not to start smoking, many continue to do so. We will investigate patterns of smoking experimentation in adolescence and early adulthood, in order to identify risk periods when experimenting with cigarette smoking is associated with increased likelihood of progression to regular use. This will allow us to better target public health campaigns and gui de the formulation of policy. We will also investigate environmental and genetic risk factors for smoking initiation. This will initially focus on parental smoking as an environmental influence (in particular maternal smoking during pregnancy, where there is evidence from animal models that nicotine exposure modifies sensitivity to nicotine), and variation in nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sub-unit genes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the latter have recently been strongly associated w ith nicotine dependence and other smoking phenotypes, but not investigated comprehensively in smoking initiation. Importantly, this study will also provide a rich resource for the future study of factors which influence cigarette smoking, and the consequences of smoking on other outcomes. There is only one opportunity to add this value in the phenotype-rich large ALSPAC cohort.