A comparison of sustained-release bupropion and placebo for smoking cessation.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Bupropion, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 615 subjects.

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

The target quitting date (or "target quit date") was one week after the beginning of treatment.

How the Study Was Run

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

The subjects were allocated by chance, so the Bupropion group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the subjects and researchers unaware of who received Bupropion.

Some subjects received a placebo instead of Bupropion, giving a reference point.

Trials of antidepressant medications for smoking cessation have had mixed results.

The researchers conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a sustained-release form of bupropion for smoking cessation.

The researchers excluded smokers with current depression, but not those with a history of major depression.

Self-reported abstinence was confirmed by a carbon monoxide concentration in expired air of 10 ppm or less.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Antidepressive Agents, Second-Generation, Bupropion, Depression, Nicotine, Smoking Cessation, Substance Withdrawal Syndrome and Tobacco Use Disorder.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Bupropion in 615 subjects.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1997 (The New England journal of medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.