August 16, 2012   Stop-smoking medications such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), bupropion and varenicline have been shown to be effective in clinical trials, but population-based studies have produced mixed results on effectiveness when medications are used outside the confines of a research study. This latest study, conducted through the International Tobacco Control (ITC) research collaboration, is one of the largest real-world evaluations of medication effectiveness conducted to date, and the first to comprehensively control for biases in participants’ recall of quit attempts.

The study tracked the smoking behaviors of more than 2,500 adult smokers in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States who reported making a quit attempt between 2006 and 2009. Study participants were asked how recently they had attempted to quit and whether they used any type of stop-smoking medication. Six-month continuous abstinence among those who recalled making a very recent quit attempt was assessed at the next follow-up interview. The results showed that those who used varenicline, bupropion or the nicotine patch had much higher quit success at six months compared to those who tried to quit without using medication.

For More Information:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-medications-greatly-smokers-chances.html