Tom Nolan’s research reviews—20 July 2023

Going up in smokeSmoking cessation treatments seem to have gone out of fashion. I used to light up (with enthusiasm, not pull out a Zippo) when a smoker came to see me and reel off stats about the success rates of our in-house smoking cessation clinic. But when everyone decided it was fine to vape instead (remember the 95% less harmful stat?) the funding was cut, and now we can just direct people to the nearest vape store, petrol station, or sweet shop for their non-smoker nicotine fix. Maybe a new drug is what we need to reignite our smoking cessation efforts? Could cytisinicline, a plant based alkaloid, be the one? A randomised trial of 810 smokers in the US found five times higher continuous absence rates with a 12 week course of cytisinicline compared with placebo during weeks 9 to 24. However, this still only amounted to around 1…
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