Safety of e-cigarettes and nicotine patches as stop-smoking aids in pregnancy: Secondary analysis of the Pregnancy Trial of E-cigarettes and Patches (PREP) randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The aim of this study was to examine the safety of e-cigarettes (EC) and nicotine patches (NRT) when used to help pregnant smokers quit.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

The participants comprised 1140 pregnant smokers.

The researchers compared women using and not using EC and NRT regularly during pregnancy.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

A recent trial of EC versus NRT reported safety outcomes in the randomized arms.

The researchers conducted a further analysis based on product use.

Twenty-three hospitals in England and a stop-smoking service in Scotland took part.

Measurements included nicotine intake compared with baseline, birth weight, other pregnancy outcomes, adverse events, maternal respiratory symptoms and relapse in early abstainers.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Nicotine, Cotinine, Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, Smoking Cessation, Birth Weight, Smoking and Recurrence.

Author keywords: e‐cigarettes, pregnancy, safety and vaping.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 11 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2024 (Addiction (Abingdon, England)), a journal based in England.

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