Nicotine replacement therapy doesn`t work in real world, study says
Baku, January 13 (AZERTAC). Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) may work fine in clinical trial settings, but not so much in the real world. That`s according to research published Monday afternoon in the journal Tobacco Control.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, tracked 787 adult smokers in Massachusetts who had recently quit smoking. Participants were interviewed three times, at two-year intervals; they were asked whether they still were abstaining from smoking, whether they used an NRT (either a prescription drug or an over-the-counter product such as nicotine-replacement gum, inhaler or patch), and whether they`d undergone professional counseling in support of their cessation efforts.
The key findings: At each followup, nearly a third of those those who had initially reported they`d recently tried to quit reported that they had relapsed. The relapse rate was no different for those who hadn`t used NRT and those who had used NRT for more than six weeks, with or without counseling support. And there was no difference between heavy and light smokers` success at quitting via NRT.
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