If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  Time to First Cigarette Upon Waking Helps Provide Dosage of Nicotine Gum for Smoking Cessation: Presented at SRNT By Louise Gagnon TORONTO -- February 18, 2011 -- A patient’s time from waking to first cigarette can be used as a measurement to determine the appropriate dosage of nicotine replacement in the form of chewing gum and could result in higher smoking-cessation rates, according to research presented here at the 2011 Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) Annual Meeting. “Nicotine gum comes in two strengths, and traditionally the higher strength has been allocated for people who smoke 25 cigarettes or more per day,” explained investigator Saul Shiffman, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, speaking here at a poster session on February 17. “The thinking is that people are not smoking as many cigarettes [with smoking restrictions in public places], so assigning the higher dose according to smoking more than 25 cigarettes a day is not the best way anymore [to decide on the correct dosage].” A great deal of research demonstrates that smokers who smoke within 30 minutes of waking are regarded as “nicotine-dependent,” Dr. Shiffman stated. “Often some of these people are having their first cigarette before they are out of bed,” noted Dr. Shiffman. “This [different criteria for dosage] has the effect of shifting people who would be told to use the 2-mg dose [of nicotine gum] to now use the 4-mg dose.” Investigators sought to establish the efficacy of the 4-mg dosage of nicotine gum by reanalysing results from a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 3-arm trial conducted in 2000, which used the traditional criteria to assign dosage. Investigators analysed the effect of the new algorithm on smoking cessation. The team observed that determining appropriate dose based on whether the time to first cigarette was less than 30 minutes resulted in more than a doubling of smoking-cessation rates at 1 month (relative risk [RR] = 2.24), 2 months (RR = 2.25), 3 months (RR = 2.51), and 6 months (RR = 2.41). In addition, the 4-mg dose of nicotine gum was effective among smokers whose time to first cigarette was less than 30 minutes and whose per-day consumption was less than 25 cigarettes (RR = 2.3, P <.002). [Presentation title: Assigning Dose of Nicotine Gum by Time to First Cigarette, Rather Than Cigarette Consumption. Abstract POS2-20]
|
