Nicotine dependence and biochemical exposure measures in the second trimester of pregnancy.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Linear regression was used to examine correlations between HSI and blood cotinine and salivary cotinine and exhaled CO.

Why It Was Studied

The Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI) is validated to measure nicotine dependence in nonpregnant smokers, and in these smokers, mean salivary and serum cotinine levels are related by a ratio of 1.25.

The researchers investigated the validity of HSI in pregnancy by comparing this with 3 biochemical measures; in a search for a less-invasive cotinine measure in pregnancy, the researchers also explored the relationship between mean blood and salivary cotinine levels.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Cross-sectional analyses using baseline data from the Smoking, Nicotine, and Pregnancy Trial.

Correlation between blood and salivary cotinine was investigated using linear regression through the origin.

What Was Measured

The Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI) is validated to measure nicotine dependence in nonpregnant smokers, and in these smokers, mean salivary and serum cotinine levels are related by a ratio of 1.25.

The researchers investigated the validity of HSI in pregnancy by comparing this with 3 biochemical measures; in a search for a less-invasive cotinine measure in pregnancy, the researchers also explored the relationship between mean blood and salivary cotinine levels.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Biomarkers, Carbon Monoxide, Cotinine, Cross-Sectional Studies, England, Gestational Age and Nicotine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2014 (Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco), a journal based in England.

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