Nicotine-replacing gums and patches failed to help smokers who quit smoking stay off cigarettes, even when used with professional counseling, a study at the Harvard School of Public Health found.

Researchers of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health who surveyed 781 former smokers found almost a third relapsed even after using nicotine replacement products, reports Bloomberg.
“Using nicotine replacement therapy is no more effective in helping people stop smoking cigarettes in the long-term than trying to quit on one’s own,” said lead author Hillel Alpert, a Harvard research scientist. While the therapies helped smokers quit in clinical trials where patients are carefully monitored, the study published online by the journal Tobacco Control shows they are less effective in a real-world setting, Alpert said.
The director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health, Gregory Connolly, said in a statement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should only approve products that have been shown to help smokers quit and stay off cigarettes for years.
The National Cancer Institute funded the research.
The results of the study cast doubt on the long-term benefit of products like Pfizer’s Nicotrol inhaler and GlaxoSmithKline’s NicoDerm CQ patch and Nicorette gum, leaders in a market worth USD 1.2 billion (EUR 939 million) annually, according to IMS Health, a research firm.
Sarah Sanders, a spokeswoman for London-based Glaxo, said that “hundreds” of previous studies had shown the efficacy of nicotine replacement, while Mackay Jimeson, a spokesman for New York-based Pfizer, commented that quitting smoking is "a journey and quit strategies can range from ‘cold turkey’ to gum and NRT to other medications and counseling". (pi)