Effectiveness of nicotine patches

The nicotine patches, nicotine replacement therapy in the most popular smoking cessation, would prove to be effective in adolescents than in adults, at least in the early stages, indicate the results of a study published in the " Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. "

Joel Killen and colleagues at the Faculty of Medicine at Stanford University, investigated the benefits of replacement therapy with 211 adolescents aged 15 to 18 years, smokers addicted to nicotine and having already tried unsuccessfully to stop smoking.

All youth participants received nicotine patches and half of them, the treatment was completed by taking a prescribed antidepressant for smoking cessation in a dosage appropriate for their age (the other n ' received a placebo).

In addition to the pharmacological treatment, 211 young people participated in a weekly support sessions supervised by researchers to assist them to identify and manage situations "at risk" triggering home cravings .

After ten weeks of treatment, the proportion of participants who stopped smoking completely (about a quarter) was comparable to that recorded during the trials in adults, and much higher than that obtained in other studies on adolescents, without the addition of oral therapy does make a significant difference. Indeed, 23% of teens who took this treatment had stopped smoking, against 28% of those who received only patches.

But adults seem easier to maintain long-term abstinence because after six months, the proportion of adolescents not smoking at all only amounts to less than 10%, regardless of the replacement therapy monitoring .

Despite a lack of effective long-term treatment in terms of withdrawal, the vast majority of young smokers in the study decreased sustainable daily consumption of cigarettes and some of them even maintained a consumption of less than one cigarette per day, welcome the authors.

While doctors generally do not feel they have the tools necessary to help young smokers to quit their bad habits, these results indicate that nicotine patches may prove useful to the adolescent population, U.S. researchers conclude.