Nicotine patches do not help to stop smoking
Many believe that medicine has given us a simple, easy and effective method for quitting cigarettes – nicotine patches.
However, it turns out that things are not as perfect as they seem.
According to the results of a new medical study published in the journal BMJ, nicotine patches do not help pregnant smokers quit this harmful habit at all.
The study included 402 pregnant women from France who had the habit of smoking five or more cigarettes a day.
Women who were 12-20 weeks pregnant were randomly divided into two groups: one to use 16-hour nicotine patches and the other group to be treated with inactive patches with placebo.
The experiment continued until the birth of the children. The participants in the study also received psychological help, with specialists helping them stop smoking. The women went for check-ups every month.
According to the data of the scientists, only 5.5 percent of women in the group with nicotine patches and 5.1 percent of the second group with placebo patches were able to completely stop smoking.
The researchers also found that women in the nicotine patch group had significantly higher blood pressure than participants in the placebo patch group.
This means that any further research that will be dedicated to studying nicotine replacement therapy in pregnant smokers should also take into account the readings of fluctuations in their blood pressure.
“The results we obtained are very disappointing, but they should simply encourage efforts to search, find and investigate new medications to stop smoking, both drug-related and non-drug-related,” says doctor Ivan Berlin and his colleagues from Paris.
“In the absence of proven medicinal methods, psychological support remains the main method of helping pregnant women who want to permanently stop smoking cigarettes”.
“Psychological counseling was delayed for two weeks after the start of the study, and this may explain why the rate of successful quitting smoking was so low in both groups of female participants in the experiment,” he adds. Leonie Brose of King’s College London.
“For now, it is too early to completely give up on the possibility of using nicotine replacement therapy,” says Leon.
“On the other hand, serious new research is needed to find, develop and study new, more effective ways to treat pregnant female smokers who are unable to stop smoking on their own” .
Regardless of the fact that scientists around the world are actively developing new methods to help get rid of this harmful habit, the problem of quitting smoking still remains very complex and no effective solution has been found for it .
Experts advise us to take care of our health and try not to start smoking so that we don’t have to look for ways to quit smoking later.
