Smokers Using Combination Drug Therapies More Likely to Quit, Study Shows

The most effective therapy for smokers who wished to quit involved a combination of bupropion SR and nicotine lozenges, revealed a study conducted by Dr. Steven S. Smith and colleagues of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

Sustained-release (SR) bupropion (commonly available as Wellbutrin SR and Zyban) is a prescription medication utilized in the treatment of depression and smoking cessation.  A sustained-release form of Zyban was used in the study.

Researchers contacted 7,128 people who smoked 10 or more cigarettes daily and were visiting a doctor for a primary care appointment. Of that group, 1,346 of the people expressed an interest in making an attempt to quit smoking and were used in the study.

Five different therapies were tested randomly on the study participants, with some patients receiving a nicotine patch only, a nicotine lozenge only, bupropion SR only, a nicotine patch plus a nicotine lozenge, and bupropion SR plus a nicotine lozenge.

Thirty percent of the patients who took bupropion SR with the nicotine lozenges were smoke-free six months after the first attempt at quitting, yielding the greatest success rate of all the therapies examined.

“These findings provide strong support for the wide-scale implementation of this efficient primary-care based intervention model that significantly reduces barriers to patient access to evidence-based cessation treatments,” the researchers of the study noted.

Twenty-seven percent of those using a nicotine patch and lozenges were smoke-free six months later, compared with 20 percent of those using the lozenge alone, 18 percent of those using the patch alone, and 17 percent of those using bupropion SR alone.

Those involved in the study were offered counseling through a telephone line. Thirty-six percent of the patients who utilized more than 90 minutes of counseling continued to refrain from smoking six months following the first quitting attempt. Twenty percent of patients who did not use the counseling service or used the counseling for less than 90 minutes remained smoke-free.