Tobacco Articles: category cessation

Cigarette Demand Soars in Japan: With the country set to raise tobacco taxes starting October 1, many smokers are stocking up and retailers are cashing in.

nacspoll@nacsonline.com (RSS Feed) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

With Japan’s tobacco taxes scheduled to jump by 60 yen on October 1, Japanese smokers are stockpiling cigarettes, the Yomiuri Shimbun reports. Tobacco companies and convenience stores are racing to keep up with the increased demand. Drug stores are looking to cash in after the tax hike by expanding their lineup of smoking cessation products, while Japan Tobacco Inc. will be remodeling its products to counter any decline in sales.

Study: Preventive services can saves lives, billions of dollars, at little or no cost

Jessica.R.Flannigan@HealthPartners.com — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Preventive health services such as daily aspirin use, tobacco cessation screening and alcohol abuse screening can potentially save 2 million lives and nearly $4 billion annually, according to a new paper produced by the National Commission on Prevention Priorities (NCPP). The NCPP is convened by the Partnership for Prevention. Four of the five lead authors perform research with HealthPartners Research Foundation. “People talk about the importance of prevention, and this study shows that a significant number of recommended clinical preventive services save lives and sometimes save money” The paper, “Greater Use Of Preventive Services In U.S. Health Care Could Save Lives At Little Or No Cost,” is published in the September issue of Health Affairs. Its authors analyzed the estimated cost of adopting a package of 20 proven preventive services against the savings that could be generated. They also estimated how much in health care costs would have been saved in a given year if 90 percent of the population had used those services. For 2006, the year selected, the savings were estimated at $3.7 billion.

Selecta Biosciences Receives $3 Million from NIH/NIDA to Develop Nicotine Vaccine for Smoking Cessation: -- Targeted Synthetic Vaccine Particles (tSVP) Offer Potential for Increased Anti-Nicotine Efficacy to Increase Success of Smoking Cessation --

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Selecta Biosciences, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing synthetic nanoparticle vaccines and immunotherapies, today announced that it has been awarded a grant for $3 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an institute within the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant is aimed at advancing the development of an enhanced therapeutic nicotine vaccine for the treatment of smoking cessation and relapse prevention. "We view a nicotine vaccine as one of our promising programs that are poised to advance into human clinical trials based on our progress with Selecta’s technology platform." The $3 million grant will support the funding of a clinical drug candidate from Selecta’s pipeline, and assist with advancing a nicotine vaccine from preclinical through early clinical evaluation. The award is one of a select number of grants provided nationwide by NIH under the unique BRDG-SPAN program (Biomedical Research and Development and Growth To Spur the Acceleration of New Technologies Pilot Program) which is designed to bridge the gap between R&D and commercialization for promising new medical technologies.

Maven Semantic: Smoking Cessation Research Database: Search Over 14,000 People and Over 1,000 Smoking Cessation Research Organisations

bryan.mcmanmon@mavensemantic.com — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Maven Semantic (http://www.mavensemantic.com) announces updates to their Smoking Cessation research database. "The system uses the context in which a given person appears, using artificial intelligence techniques to find out information not otherwise visible - for example, how important is this person in a specific medical research specialization" The new database is now available to marketing, business development, competitor intelligence, KOL, medical affairs and related departments in the life sciences sector.

Failure to improve cigarette smoking abstinence with transdermal selegiline + cognitive behavior therapy : Volume 105, Issue 9, pages 1660–1668, September 2010

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Conclusion Transdermal selegiline does not appear generally effective in aiding smoking cessation though there may be a selective effect in those smokers with low ‘behavioral activation’.

Antidepressant patch doesn't help smokers quit

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

An antidepressant drug delivered through a patch on the skin is no better than placebo for helping smokers kick the habit, new research shows. Eldepryl (generic name selegiline) is used to treat Parkinson's disease, depression, and dementia, in both pill and patch form. Nicotine craving is a major hurdle for smokers trying to abstain, and selegiline can help maintain levels of brain chemicals like dopamine that are reduced in the absence of nicotine. "That's why we hoped that selegiline might reduce the cravings and urges associated with quitting and thus help make it easier to quit," Dr. Joel D. Killen of Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, one of the researchers who conducted the study, told Reuters Health. Two previous studies using selegiline in pill form suggested the drug could reduce cravings in smokers trying to quit.

Penn to study how genetics influence smoking cessation

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Caryn Lerman does not believe in the one-strategy-fits-all approach to helping people quit smoking. Neither, apparently, does the National Institutes of Health. The NIH awarded a team of Penn researchers led by Lerman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a $12 million, five-year grant to study the pharmacogenetics of nicotine addiction treatment. The study will look at how smokers’ genetic make-up influences their quitting success. The results of the study could lead to the creation of personalized approaches to smoking cessation treatment, which would help smokers pick a method that will work best for them. “Smoking is the greatest preventable cause of morbidity and mortality,” said Lerman, who is also scientific director of Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center. “It is imperative to find better ways to optimize the delivery of specific treatments to increase the success rates for smokers who wish to quit.”

Playing vs. puffing

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

BURLINGTON -- Computer gaming often conjures up images of slackers so engrossed in a virtual world that they harm their health by skipping meals and exercise, spending endless hours with their eyes glued to the screen and their hand clicking away. At Champlain College and other academic institutions around the country, designers are looking for a better role to play, developing games aimed at helping people improve their health in a variety of ways, be it getting diabetics to eat right or leading Parkinson's patients through rehabilitation. Amanda Crispel, program director of game design, game art and animation at Champlain and CEO of a startup company, Hoozinga Game Media, is working with the Vermont Health Department to promote a new game intended to help smokers quit. "Khemia," which is Latin for "alchemy," is designed to give smokers looking to kick the habit something to do with their minds and hands for the five to ten minutes a cigarette craving typically lasts, Crispel said.

Docs find different responses to stop-smoking treatments

sitefeedback@evtrib.com ( Lee Bowman, Scripps Howard News Service) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Addiction to nicotine is hardly a one-size-fits-all problem. Scientists have a growing portfolio of evidence that tobacco smoke impacts the DNA of different people in different ways, that individual smokers inhale differently and, conversely, that tools used to try and break addiction don't work the same in everyone. One study reported in July that humans have at least 323 genes whose expression levels are affected by smoking behaviors. Researchers from the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio studied white blood cells taken from 1,240 people, including 297 current smokers, to identify changes in gene expression from exposure to cigarette smoke. "The scale at which exposure to cigarette smoke appears to influence the expression levels of our genes is sobering," said Jac Charlesworth, lead author of the study published in the British journal BMC Medical Genomics.

Database Search: smoking, Games

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Aspire is an interactive game designed to educate players about the true facts when it comes to smoking cigarettes. . . .

Choices: What Would I Do? is a collection of three games that present real-life scenarios to the player who must then make decisions that affect the outcome of the situation. Each game takes place in high school but focus on different aspects . . .

My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr is an interactive game designed to help players quit smoking tobacco.

Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon is an educational video game that teaches children about the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

Smoke Attack "In this smoking-risk awareness game from the swiss federal office of public health, you are navigating the caracter "Oxy" through offices. You can fight the aggressive smoking balls and the cigarettes by shooting them with your oxygen gun. . . .

Wally Bear and the NO! Gang is an educational game designed to teach and encourage children to say no to drugs and alcohol.

Health Games Research

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Who We Are Health Games Research is a national program that funds research to advance the innovation and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies intended to improve health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio and is headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There is both an art and a science to designing health games that are appealing, engaging, and impactful. Health Games Research provides the science. We work with creative game designers and artists to integrate well tested principles of learning and health behavior change into games that motivate players to improve their health habits and take better care of their health problems.

Computer game designers try health promotion

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

At Champlain College and other academic institutions around the country, designers are looking for a better role to play, developing games aimed at helping people improve their health in a variety of ways, be it getting diabetics to eat right or leading Parkinson's patients through rehabilitation. Amanda Crispel, program director of game design, game art and animation at Champlain and CEO of a startup company, Hoozinga Game Media, is working with the Vermont Health Department to promote a new game intended to help smokers quit. "Khemia," which is Latin for "alchemy," is designed to give smokers looking to kick the habit something to do with their minds and hands for the five to ten minutes a cigarette craving typically lasts, Crispel said. "It's behavioral modification," she said. "You have set up a behavioral pattern, a set of neurons that says when this happens, that happens." "Khemia" is designed to disrupt the pattern associated with smoking and, in conjunction with other tools such as nicotine gum, reduce those cravings over time.

Defining and understanding success at smoking reduction: A mixed-methods study: Addictive Behaviors Sun Aug 22 22:54:35 BST 2010 doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2010.08.006

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Purpose To examine differences in the explanatory power of variables thought to discriminate between students who smoke and students who have reduced (or quit). . . . Results The most effective variables involve smoking-related beliefs and perceptions, particularly in anticipated future smoking status, attempted quitting, number of smoking friends, and perceptions of other smokers. Personality and psychological variables were not effective at discriminating between the two groups.

Healthcare financing systems for increasing the use of tobacco dependence treatment

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Background We hypothesized that provision of financial assistance for smokers trying to quit, or reimbursement of their care providers, could lead to an increased rate of successful quit attempts. . . . Apart from counselling and pharmacotherapy, strategies such as financial interventions could help smokers quit. We found eight trials involving financial interventions directed at smokers and two trials directed at health care providers. Providing full financial benefits (covering all the costs of treatment) to smokers when compared to no financial benefits increased the proportion quitting smoking, quit attempts and utilization of drug treatment by smokers. Although the absolute differences in quitting were small, the costs per quitter were low. We did not find a difference in effect between full and partial financial benefits in increasing the use of smoking cessation treatment or abstinence from smoking. Financial benefits extended to health care providers increased the use of behavioural interventions for smoking cessation.

EDITORIAL: Stop-smoking aids a good investment

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

If the provincial government is serious about convincing more British Columbians to butt out, it should listen to the advice of the Canadian Medical Association and cover the full costs of smoking-cessation products. As it is, only Quebec smokers are reimbursed when they purchase the nicotine patch, nicotine gum or other quit-smoking therapies. . . . The CMA says funding for quit-smoking products should come out of the "substantial tax revenues" collected on the sale of tobacco products. Smokers have long believed they shoulder an unfair tax burden. By putting some of that money into programs designed to help them quit, maybe they'd feel as though they were getting something for their money. And considering the cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses, the decision to pay for stop-smoking products should be considered a good investment.