Quitting easier with meds?
September 11, 2012
AUSTRALIAN smokers are more
likely to succeed in quit attempts
when they use medications or
nicotine patches, according to new
research published in Addiction.
During the study researchers from
the Roswell Park Cancer Institute
tracked over 2,500 smokers in the
UK, Australia, US and Canada, who
reported that they had tried to quit
the habit between 2006 and 2009.
As part of the study, researchers
asked participants how many quit
attempts they had made and
whether those attempts were with
will power alone or accompanied
by anti-smoking medications.
Researchers tracked the smokers
for six months to see which
individuals managed to quit for at
least half a year.
According to the study results
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.
“By restricting our analyses to
those who made very recent quit
attempts, we reduced the extent to
which differences in quit-attempt
recall could bias the estimates of
medication effectiveness,” said
Karin Kasza, MA, statistician in the
Division of Cancer Prevention &
Population Sciences at RPCI and
lead author of the study.
“Consistent with the strong
evidence from clinical trials, our
findings show that medications are
indeed effective in increasing
smokers’ chances of quitting when
used in the real world,” she added.
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