Effects of nicotine withdrawal on panic-like response to breath holding: a placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover patch study.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Periods of nicotine withdrawal, in particular, may promote panic in individuals high in anxiety sensitivity.

The researchers examined the importance of nicotine withdrawal in the occurrence of smoking and panic.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers, young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group a baseline to be compared against.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

The researchers utilized a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized, crossover design.

Fifty smokers underwent a breath-holding (BH) challenge after the transdermal administration of nicotine on one test day and a placebo on another test day.

Physiological and psychological variables were assessed at baseline as well as directly before and after the challenges.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Administration, Cutaneous, Blood Pressure, Breath Holding, Heart Rate, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists and Panic.

The authors tagged it with the keywords addiction, anxiety/anxiety disorders, panic attacks/agoraphobia, smoking and substance use disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (Depression and anxiety), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.