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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 The authors of the JAMA editorial -- which is subtitled Definite Promise, But No Panacea -- were reserved in their praise for the new drug.
"Several issues temper some of the enthusiasm for this agent," they wrote. One is the relatively high level of side effects noted in the trials, with almost 30 percent of participants reporting nausea, and many others experiencing "abnormal dreams" while on Chantix.
Drop-out rates were also high (35 percent in the Wisconsin trial), although this rate is similar to that usually seen in smoking-cessation trials. However, the editorialists pointed out that in the Norwegian trial, only those smokers who had quit by 12 weeks were allowed to enter the second, relapse-focused phase of the trial.
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Because about one-third of the original participants did not succeed in quitting within three months, "the authors have eliminated [from their analysis] approximately one third of individuals for whom this drug does not appear to be effective," the Tennessee experts noted.
Finally, they said, all of these Pfizer-funded trials took place under the very best conditions, at academic research centers where smokers were closely monitored and instructed on proper use of the drugs.
That's a far cry from a "real world" situation where the average smoker is left more or less on his own after receiving a prescription from a doctor, they added.
So, while the results of these trials are promising, the editorialists pointed out that nicotine addiction remains an impossibly tough challenge for most smokers -- in fact, "the majority of participants in these three studies did not quit smoking, even with varenicline," they wrote.
The resilience of the smoking habit against all interventions suggests that "patients currently cannot and probably never will simply be able to 'take a pill' that will make them stop smoking," the editorialists concluded.
More information
For help on quitting smoking, head to Smokefree.gov (www.smokefree.gov ).
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