USA Today (11/29, Lloyd) reports, "Better, prolonged therapy for smokers helps them kick the habit, even smokers who have no desire to quit, according to" research published in the Nov. 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers noted that "if you treat smoking like other health conditions and diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes, you're more likely to be successful," citing a need not to "view relapse as failure," but instead, "to build in interim goals until success is achieved."
The Los Angeles Times (11/29, Stein) "Booster Shots" blog reports that the first study "focused on using a practice quit-attempt program and nicotine therapy for smokers who weren't motivated to quit" while the second study "compared an eight-week usual care stop-smoking program with a year-long telephone-based chronic disease management program." The study had a success rate of 85% for people "assigned to a six-week practice quit-attempt program" and 82% for those who also received nicotine therapy. A second study found that "at 18 months, rates of six-month smoking abstinence were 23.5% in the usual care group and 30.2% in the long-term care group," and smokers "in the long-term group" who didn't quit skill smoked less than those in the usual care group.
HealthDay (11/29, Reinberg) reports that Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, "doesn't think this study went on long enough to draw any definitive conclusions. 'The study had no long-term follow-up, thus lacking what I consider to be the gold standard of smoking-cessation experimentation,' he said."
MedPage Today (11/29, Bankhead) reports that the research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The Minneapolis Star Tribune (11/29, Lerner) and St. Paul Pioneer-Press (11/29, Snowbeck) also cover the story.
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