Varenicline versus nicotine replacement therapy for long-term smoking cessation: an observational study using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this observational study publication.

To estimate the effect of prescribing varenicline on smoking cessation rates and health outcomes.

Finally, the researchers developed methods to assess the relative bias of the different statistical methods the researchers used.

Why It Was Studied

Smoking is the leading avoidable cause of illness and premature mortality.

The first-line treatments for smoking cessation are nicotine replacement therapy and varenicline.

Who Took Part

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

The researchers extracted data on all patients who were prescribed varenicline or nicotine replacement therapy after 1 September 2006 who were aged ≥ 18 years.

The researchers investigated the baseline differences between patients prescribed varenicline and patients prescribed nicotine replacement therapy.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers conducted an observational cohort study using electronic medical records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

The researchers investigated the effects of varenicline on smoking cessation, all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality and hospitalisation for: (1) chronic lung disease, (2) lung cancer, (3) coronary heart disease, (4) pneumonia, (5) cerebrovascular disease, (6) diabetes, and (7) external causes; primary care diagnosis of myocardial infarction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, or prescription for anxiety; weight in kg; general practitioner and hospital attendance.

Their primary outcome was smoking cessation 2 years after the first prescription.

The researchers report results using multivariable-adjusted, propensity score and instrumental variable regression.

What Was Measured

Future research should investigate the decline in prescribing of smoking cessation products; develop an optimal treatment algorithm for smoking cessation; use methods for using instruments with survival outcomes; and develop methods for comparing multivariable-adjusted and instrumental variable estimates.

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 24, No. 9.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Cohort Studies, Electronic Health Records, Mortality, Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive, Smoking Cessation, Smoking Cessation Agents and Tobacco Use Cessation Devices.

The authors tagged it with the keywords CPRD, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, NICOTINE REPLACEMENT PRODUCTS and VARENICLINE.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Its findings take up roughly 9 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2020 (Health technology assessment (Winchester, England)), a journal based in England.

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