Combo Plan Helps Smokers Quit

(November 3, 2009) - If you want to increase your odds of quitting smoking (Read about "Quit Smoking"), then a nicotine patch and lozenges might be your best bet. In a comparison of five different smoking cessation medications, a nicotine patch plus a nicotine lozenge appears most effective at helping smokers quit, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Many smokers have successfully quit using a variety of smoking cessation pharmacotherapies, yet there is little direct evidence on the relative efficacies of these different pharmacotherapies," the authors write as background information in the article. "Without such evidence clinicians and smokers lack a strong empirical basis for recommending or selecting among them."

Researchers conducted a randomized clinical trial of smoking cessation therapies involving 1,504 adults. All had smoked at least 10 cigarettes a day during the previous six months and were motivated to quit. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six treatment groups:

• nicotine lozenge alone
• nicotine patch alone
• bupropion alone
• patch plus nicotine lozenge
• bupropion plus nicotine lozenge
• placebo

Bupropion treatment began one week before a designated quit date and continued for eight weeks; all other treatments were taken for eight to 12 weeks after the quit date. All participants also received six individual counseling sessions.

Smoking rates were assessed one week, eight weeks and six months after the quit date. When all the treatments were compared at the six-month point, only the individuals in the patch plus nicotine lozenge group were more successful in quitting than those taking placebo. Smokers using a patch and nicotine lozenge were also more likely to have quit at seven days and tended to have other more positive outcomes, such as a longer period of time before relapsing. In addition, this combination along with the patch alone were most effective at helping people achieve at least one day of abstinence from smoking, an important stepping stone to successful quitting.