Effects of varenicline, nicotine or placebo on depressive symptoms in postmenopausal smokers.

What Was Tested

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

The researchers examined varenicline use and past history of major depressive disorder (MDD) on depressive symptoms during smoking cessation.

Why It Was Studied

Varenicline carries a black box warning for neuropsychiatric adverse events.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 152 women taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, women only.

This is a secondary analysis of two smoking cessation studies in 152 postmenopausal women who received placebo or nicotine patch, or 78 women who received varenicline with relaxation.

Lifetime history of MDD (LH-MDD) was assessed at baseline and women with current MDD were excluded.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

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

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

Center for Epidemiologic Study Depression scale (CESD) measured depressive symptoms at baseline, 6 and 12 weeks.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Benzazepines, Combined Modality Therapy, Depression, Major Depressive Disorder, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists and Postmenopause.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 152 women.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 10 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (The American journal on addictions), a journal based in England.

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