Smoking cessation more effective with pills and patch: study

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People trying to quit smoking may be more likely to succeed if they combine the patch with a pill, suggests a new study from South Africa. According to the study’s authors, the findings challenge previous research that found no added benefit from combining the smoking cessation drug varenicline, marketed in the U.S. as Chantix by Pfizer, with nicotine patches. “The studies that have been done in the past didn’t show any difference, but they were inadequate to the task both in terms of how long they followed the patients as well as the number of patients involved,” said Dr. Hal Strelnick, a smoking cessation specialist who was not involved in the new study. The new results may encourage some doctors to treat patients who failed with other methods to quit smoking with the combination pill and patch, said Strelnick, division chief of community health and professor of clinical family and social medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York.