Comparison of nicotine exposure during pregnancy when smoking and abstinent with nicotine replacement therapy: systematic review and meta-analysis.

What It Covers

This meta-analysis looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Some guidelines recommend nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) for smoking cessation during pregnancy, but adherence with NRT is generally poor and could be partially explained by nicotine-related safety concerns.

The researchers compared pregnant women's cotinine and nicotine exposures from smoking with those when they were abstinent from smoking and using NRT.

Who the Included Studies Covered

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

Pregnant women who smoked and became abstinent but used NRT either in a cessation study or in a study investigating other impacts of NRT.

How the Review Was Done

Systematic review with meta-analysis and narrative reporting.

Twelve studies were included: in most, only one type of NRT was used.

Seven were quality-assessed and judge of variable quality.

Studies from any setting that reported nicotine or cotinine levels when smoking and later when abstinent and using NRT.

The researchers quality-assessed longitudinal cohort studies using a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa scale.

What Was Measured

For meta-analysis, the researchers used mean within-person differences in cotinine or nicotine levels when smoking and at later follow-up when abstinent and using NRT.

Where such data were not available, the researchers calculated differences in group mean levels and reported these narratively, indicating where data were not completely longitudinal.

The subject headings attached to it are Cigarette Smoking, Cotinine, Maternal Exposure, Nicotine, Smoking Cessation Agents and Tobacco Use Cessation Devices.

The authors tagged it with the keywords nicotine replacement therapy and pregnancy.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 3 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2019 (Addiction (Abingdon, England)), a journal based in England.

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