Predictors of adherence to nicotine replacement therapy: Machine learning evidence that perceived need predicts medication use.

What Was Tested

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

Identify and characterize subgroups of smokers based on adherence to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

Why It Was Studied

Nonadherence to smoking cessation medication is a frequent problem.

Who Took Part

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

Secondary classification tree analyses of data from a 2-arm randomized controlled trial of Recommended Usual Care (R-UC, n = 315) versus Abstinence-Optimized Treatment (A-OT, n = 308) were conducted.

Analyses identified subgroups of smokers highly adherent to nicotine patch use in both treatment conditions, and identified subgroups of A-OT participants highly adherent to mini-lozenges.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

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

R-UC comprised 8 weeks of nicotine patch plus brief counseling whereas A-OT comprised 3 weeks of pre-quit mini-lozenges, 26 weeks of nicotine patch plus mini-lozenges, 11 counseling contacts, and 7-11 automated reminders to use medication.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Behavior Therapy, Counseling, Machine Learning, Medication Adherence, Motivation, Needs Assessment and Nicotine.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Classification tree, Nicotine dependence, Nicotine replacement therapy and Smoking cessation.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2019 (Drug and alcohol dependence), a journal based in Ireland.

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