Smoking: A blood test away from quitting for good?

Patches, vaporizers, or simply the fortified human will to stop… the means to quit smoking are no longer a secret. A study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal deduced that everyone should follow one method according to how fast their body eliminates nicotine.

TABACO: A BESPOKE TREATMENT?

A study was conducted on 1,246 smokers who were adamant to put down the cigarette once and for all. Some of the participants could breakdown nicotine faster than the rest, so the researchers grouped them as normal and slow metabolizers.

Those who process this addictive element in a cigarette at a faster rate are more likely to be heavy smokers facing difficulties to quit. In this study, each group was divided into three more groups: one treated with nicotine patches and a placebo pill; the second with a drug called Varenicline (Champix Pfizer) and placebo patches; and the third fully placebo.

After 11 weeks of treatment, normal metabolizers on the pills were almost twice as likely not to smoke than those using the patches. As for the slow metabolizers, both methods are equally efficient but the drug has brought them more side effects.

THE ANSWER

“Our findings show that matching a treatment based on the rate at which smokers metabolize nicotine could be a viable clinical strategy to help individual smokers choose the cessation method that will work best for them,” says one of the authors of the study as quoted from Daily Mail Online on January 12th.

In other words, if your body metabolizes nicotine more slowly, then your way out lies with the patches. If your body metabolizes nicotine faster, then Varenicline it is! But either way, it only takes a blood test to find out. Once the practice is implemented in mainstream clinical procedures, you can bid farewell to trial-and-error when it comes to quitting smoking!

Clémence Floc’h and Natasha Gan