Researchers through a recent study that looked into link between schizophrenia and smoking found that cigarettes may be a causal factor in the development of psychosis.

Researchers after analyzing almost 15,000 tobacco users and 273,000 non users and their relative rate of psychosis found that cigarette smoking appears to increase the risk.

James MacCabe, a psychosis expert who co-led the research at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said, "While it's always hard to determine the direction of causality, our findings indicate that smoking should be taken seriously as a possible risk factor for developing psychosis".

He further said that tobacco is one of several other factors, including certain genetic, diet, lifestyle and other influences, that were responsible for raising a person's risk of developing schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which affects around one in 100 people. The disorder typically starts developing in the early adulthood.

Common symptoms of the disorder include disruptions in thinking and perception, and patients often have psychotic experiences.

Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatric research at King's who worked with McCabe, said activity in the brain's dopamine system might be one explanation of a possible causal link between smoking and psychosis.

Despite the fact that the link between smoking cigarettes and schizophrenia has been noted before, several doctors say that patients smoke to counteract the stressful symptoms of schizophrenia or the side-effects of antipsychotic medication.

McCabe and his team analyzed rates of smoking in people and found that 57 % of individuals studied were smokers.