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Medication Plus Counseling May Help Teens Kick the Smoking Habit |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: The medication bupropion plus counseling appears to help adolescents quit cigarette smoking in the short term, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Almost one-fourth of U.S. high school students currently smoke cigarettes, according to background information in the article. They were randomly assigned to receive 150 milligrams (105 teens) or 300 milligrams (104 teens) of bupropion per day, or placebo (103 teens). Participants visited the clinic weekly for seven weeks---six weeks of treatment plus one week post-treatment---and received 10- to 20-minute individual cessation counseling sessions. After six weeks, 5.6 percent of those in the placebo group, 10.7 percent of those in the 150-milligram bupropion group and 14.5 percent of those in the 300-milligram group had quit smoking. Though the results suggest that 300 milligrams of bupropion plus brief counseling sessions may help teens quit smoking over the short term, abstinence rates at the end of the treatment period were lower than those seen in adults taking the same medication, the authors note. In addition, the high rate of relapse after stopping medication suggests that a longer treatment period---such as the 12 weeks recommended for adult smokers---may be needed. Editor's Note: This study was supported by a National Cancer Institute grant, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (financial support for all aspects of the study) and GlaxoSmithKline (provided study medication and placebo, financial support for cotinine analyses, subject screening, data cleaning and review of the draft manuscript; all data were maintained by the University of Arizona).
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