| Booster Shots |
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times blogs, 2009-11-02
Intro: Giving up cigarettes is no easy task, but smokers motivated to quit can make it easier by using a nicotine patch combined with a nicotine lozenge, gum or nasal spray, according to a new study.
Smoking cessation aides are known to be helpful, but there’s very little data on which products are most effective. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison have filled in that gap with a head-to-head comparison of five different strategies. . . .
Their results, published in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, found that all five treatments increased the odds of being a nonsmoker after six months. The benefits ranged from a 63% greater chance of staying smoke-free with bupropion (as compared with taking the placebo) all the way up to a 234% boost from the patch-plus-lozenge combination (compared with placebo).
When the treatments were compared directly with each other, only the patch-plus-lozenge regimen proved to be significantly better than any of the other approaches at helping users abstain from smoking for six months.
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