The effects of varenicline, bupropion, nicotine patch, and placebo on smoking cessation among smokers with major depression: A randomized clinical trial

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Community volunteers 18-75 years of age; smoke 10+ cigarettes/day; with clinically stable MDD (N = 2635) or no psychiatric disorder (N = 4028), from 140 sites in 16 countries.

Primary safety outcome: the occurrence of ≥1 treatment-emergent, moderate to severe neuropsychiatric adverse event (NPSAE).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) could be set against what happens without it.

Secondary analysis of a randomized, double-blind, active- (nicotine patch) and placebo-controlled trial of 12 weeks of either varenicline or bupropion with a 12-week follow-up.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bupropion, Depression, Major Depressive Disorder, Polyesters, Smokers, Smoking Cessation and Tobacco Use Cessation Devices.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2022 (Depression and anxiety), a journal based in United States.

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