United States – Smokers who have been trying to quit may have to introduce the dose of medication on top of the dose they are already using, depending on the new clinical trial results.
Tailored Medication Dosage
Patients will most likely be more successful when reinforcement of their smoking cessation treatment, according to the dosage, is given in case of failure at first, the researchers inform in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Along these lines, they discovered that varenicline (Chantix) is a more effective means than nicotine replacement therapy in helping quit smokers, as reported by HealthDay.
Varenicline Emerges as Superior Option
“These data indicate that sticking to the same medication isn’t effective for smokers who are unable to quit in the first six weeks of treatment,” lead researcher Paul Cinciripini said in a news release. He’s chair of behavioral science at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Our study should encourage doctors to check in on patients early in their cessation journey and, if patients are struggling, to try a new approach, such as increasing medication dosage,” he added.
Interestingly, in the clinical trial that was performed, smokers who had failed to quit in the early phase of the trial were seven times more likely to quit by the end of the second phase if their dosage was increased.
Varenicline’s success improved approximately two times when compared to nicotine replacement therapy, the results show.
Similar to buprenorphine, an anti-opioid medication, varenicline functions by partially blocking the brain receptors that respond to nicotine. It comes in tablet form.
The study involved 490 smokers and randomly assigned them to either varenicline or nicotine replacement therapy for a period of six weeks.
In the first stage, participants who were unable to stop were asked to keep doing the same thing and then either switch to the other therapy or increase their medication, respectively.
It will be the case that less than 20% of the people who were on varenicline and to whom the dose had been increased would be smoking after six weeks.
On the other hand, 14% of the individuals who switched to varenicline from nicotine replacement or those who received a dose of nicotine replacement therapy were also able to quit.
Unlike varenicline, however, not a single patient who switched to nicotine replacement, the result demonstrated, was able to successfully quit smoking.
Promising Results Highlight Urgency for Action
Unintentionally, only smokers who received higher dosages of nicotine were able to quit tobacco altogether after half a year, reported the researchers.
Annually, some 480,000 people in the USA die from the diseases that are caused by tobacco, and there are 16 million with some condition that comes from smoking, as reported by HealthDay.
Future Directions
A bigger NCT has been conducted to test five different combinations of drugs that smokers who can’t quit using either varenicline or nicotine replacement may use, as researchers indicated yesterday.