Smokers trying to give up cigarettes could be helped by Cytisinicline, a drug made from East Asian trees, as trial shows a third quite after two months of using the pill, reports the Daily Mail.

A new trial has found that Cytisinicline, a drug made from Golden Rain trees native to eastern Asia, could help smokers to quit their habit. The study showed that a third of the smokers in the trial quit after two months and that the daily tablet helped smokers to stay off cigarettes for at least five and a half months, according to the Daily Mail.
Cytisinicline interferes with the brain’s receptor cells that respond to nicotine which reduces cravings and helps with withdrawal. The drug has been used in Eastern European countries as a smoking cessation aid since the 1980 and if approved, could become the only smoking cessation drug currently available in the UK, reports the Daily Mail.
The study trialling Cytisinicline was led by Massachusetts General Hospital’s Tobacco Research and Treatment Centre and used 810 smokers looking to quit. The participants took a 3 mg tablet three times a day with one group taking it for six weeks and another for twelve weeks. Additionally, results were compared to a group that received a placebo and counselling. One in four of those on the six-week programme stopped smoking completely, compared to around one in 20 in the placebo group, reports the Daily Mail. Of those that took the pill for 12 weeks, one third quit compared to less than one in ten in the placebo group. Furthermore, a fifth had managed to stay smoke-free three months after the trial had ended. Mild side effects, such as nausea, abnormal dreams and insomnia, occurred in one in ten volunteers who took the drug, according to the Daily Mail.
“It has the potential to become the first new agent approved in nearly two decades and an important treatment option for treating tobacco dependence,” Darush Attah-Zadeh, respiratory pharmacist at the North West London Integrated Care Board, told the Pharmaceutical Journal.