Tag: Smoking

E-cigarettes and teenagers: cause for concern?

Posted on by meryemgrabski

By Marcus Munafo @MarcusMunafo 

This blog originally appeared on the Mental Elf site on 20th April 2015

shutterstock_208797175

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are a range of products that deliver vapour which typically contains nicotine (although zero-nicotine solutions are available). The name is misleading because some products are mechanical rather than electronic, and because they are not cigarettes. While first-generation products were designed to be visually similar to cigarettes, second- and third-generation products are visually distinctive and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Critically, these products do not contain tobacco, and are therefore intended to deliver nicotine without the harmful constituents of tobacco smoke.

There has been rapid growth in the popularity and use of e-cigarettes in recent years, accompanied by growth in their marketing. At present they are relatively unregulated in many countries, although countries are introducing various restrictions on their availability and marketing. For example, a ban on sales to under-18s will be introduced in England and Wales in 2015.

These products have stimulated considerable (and often highly polarized) debate in the public health community. On the one hand, if they can support smokers in moving away from smoking they have enormous potential to reduce the harms associated with smoking. On the other hand, the quality and efficacy of these products remains largely unknown and is likely to be highly variable, and data on the long-term consequences of their use (e.g., the inhalation of propylene glycol vapour and flavourings) is lacking. There is also a concern that these products may re-normalise smoking, or act as a gateway into smoking.

E-cigarettes and teenagers: a gateway

Methods

This study reports the results of a survey conducted by Trading Standards in the North-West of England on 14 to 17 year-old students. The survey focuses on tobacco-related behaviours, and a question on access to e-cigarettes was introduced in 2013. This enabled identification of factors associated with e-cigarette use among people under 18 years old.

The study used data from the 5th Trading Standards North West Alcohol and Tobacco Survey among 14 to 17 year-olds in North-West England, conducted in 2013. The questionnaire was made available to secondary schools across the region through local authority Trading Standards departments, and delivered by teachers during normal school lessons. Compliance was not recorded, and the sample was not intended to be representative but to provide a sample from a range of communities.

The survey consisted of closed, self-completed questions covering sociodemographic variables, alcohol consumption and tobacco use. There were also questions on methods of access to alcohol and tobacco, as well as involvements in violence when drunk. E-cigarette access was assessed by the question “Have you ever tried or purchased e-cigarettes?”.

The study used data from the North West Alcohol and Tobacco Survey, which asked 14 to 17 year-olds lots of questions about their substance use behaviour.

Results

A total of 114 schools participated, and the total dataset included 18,233 participants, of which some were removed for missing data or spoiled questionnaires (e.g., unrealistic answers), so that the final sample for analysis was 16,193. Some of the main findings of the survey included:

  • In total, 19.2% of respondents reported having accessed e-cigarettes, with this being higher in males than females, and increasing with age and socioeconomic deprivation.
  • Level of e-cigarette access was higher among those who had smoked, ranging from 4.9% of never smokers, through 50.7% of ex-smokers, 67.2% of light smokers and 75.8% of heavy smokers.
  • E-cigarette use was associated with alcohol use, with those who drank alcohol more likely to have accessed e-cigarettes than non-drinkers, as well as with smoking by parents/guardians.

Nearly 1 in 5 of the young people surveyed

Conclusion

The authors conclude that their results raise concerns around the access to e-cigarettes by children, particularly among those who have never smoked cigarettes. They argue that their findings suggest that the children who access e-cigarettes are also those most vulnerable to other forms of substance use and risk-taking behavior, and conclude with a call for the “urgent need for controls on e-cigarette sales to children”. The study has some important strengths, most notably its relatively large size, and ability to determine which respondents were living in rich and poor areas.

Understanding the determinants of e-cigarette use, and patterns of use across different sections of society, is important to inform the ongoing debate around their potential benefits and harms. However, it is also not clear what this study tells us that was not already known. The results are consistent with previous, larger surveys, which show that young people (mostly smokers) are trying e-cigarettes. Critically, these previous surveys have shown that while some young non-smokers are experimenting with electronic cigarettes, progression to regular use among this group is rare. Product labels already indicate that electronic cigarettes are not for sale to under-18s, and in 2014 the UK government indicated that legislation will be brought forward to prohibit the sale of electronic cigarettes to under-18s in England and Wales (although at present no such commitment has been made in Scotland).

This study does not add anything significant to our knowledge about e-cigarettes.

Limitations

There are a number of important limitations to this study:

  • As the authors acknowledge, this was not meant to be a representative survey, and the results can therefore not be generalized to the rest of the north-west of England, let alone the wider UK.
  • As a cross-sectional survey it was not able to follow up individual respondents, for example to determine whether never smokers using e-cigarettes progress to smoking. This problem is common to most e-cigarette surveys to date.
  • The question asked does not tell us whether the participants actually used the e-cigarette they accessed, or what liquid was purchased with the e-cigarette (e.g., the concentration of nicotine). Zero-nicotine solutions are available, and there is evidence that these solutions are widely used by young people.
  • The results are presented confusingly, with numerous percentages (and percentages of percentages) reported. For example, 4.9% of never smokers reported having accessed e-cigarettes, but this is less than 3% of the overall sample (fewer than 500 out of 16,193 respondents). This is potentially an important number to know, but is not reported directly in the article.

Summary

This study does not add much to what is already known. Young people experiment with substances like tobacco and alcohol, and as e-cigarettes have become widely available they have begun to experiment with these too. However, to describe electronic cigarette use as “a new drug use option” and part of “at-risk teenagers’ substance using repertoires” is probably unnecessarily alarmist, given that:

  1. There is evidence that regular use of e-cigarettes among never smokers is negligible
  2. There is little evidence of e-cigarette use acting as a gateway to tobacco use
  3. The likelihood that e-cigarette use will be associated with very low levels of harm

It's alarmist to suggest

Links

Primary reference

Huges K, Bellis MA, Hardcastle KA, McHale P, Bennett A, Ireland R, Pike K. Associations between e-cigarette access and smoking and drinking behaviours in teenagers. BMC Public Health 2015; 15: 244. doi: 10.1186/s12889-015-1618-4

Other references

Young Persons Alcohol and Tobacco Survey 2013. Lancashire County Council’s Trading Standards.

New evidence on the effects of plain cigarette packaging in Australia

Posted on by meryemgrabski

By Olivia Maynard @OliviaMaynard17 

This blog originally appeared on the Mental Elf site on 27th March 2015

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the 15th Annual World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi. With both Ireland and the UK announcing in the weeks leading up to the conference that they would implement plain (or ‘standardised’) packaging of cigarettes, it wasn’t surprising that this was one of the conference’s hot topics.

One of the sessions that focused on plain packaging was organised by Professor Melanie Wakefield’s team at the Cancer Council Victoria in Australia. As the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging, Australian data on its real-world effectiveness is of keen interest to policy-makers worldwide.

These researchers published a supplement to the journal Tobacco Control last week, including 12 new studies on plain packaging in Australia (more details about each of the 12 studies and their methodologies are given at the end of this blog). The majority of these used a ‘pre-post’ methodology, which means that they assessed behaviours and attitudes to smoking before plain packaging was introduced and compared with these same attitudes and behaviours afterwards.

At their conference session, some of these studies were discussed in more detail, with one in particular (Durkin et al., 2015), which investigated the impact of plain packaging on quitting-related cognitions, catching my attention. This study seemed like the logical extension of my most recently published paper on plain packaging, which reports the results of randomising UK smokers to use either a branded or a plain pack of cigarettes for a day and measuring smoking behaviour and attitudes to smoking and quitting.

As I’ll discuss later on, it’s important that we use a range of methodologies, including laboratory based experiments (such as those I’ve conducted) and real-world investigations (such as those conducted by the Australian researchers) to investigate the possible impact of plain packaging.

Plain (or ‘standardised’) packaging would mean standardising the size, shape, colour and method of opening of all tobacco products.

Methods

Data for this study were obtained as part of a continuous cross-sectional telephone based survey. Participants were called twice, one month apart, first for a baseline survey and then for a follow-up. Participants were aged between 18 and 69 and all participants were required to be cigarette smokers at the baseline call.

All calls were made between April 2012 and March 2014 and participants were split into 4 groups according to when their two phone calls were made:

  1. Those who had both their baseline and follow-up phone calls before plain packaging was introduced
  2. Participants’ baseline call was made before plain packaging was introduced and their follow-up was during a transitional period where both plain and branded packs were available for purchase
  3. Baseline phone calls were made during the transitional period, whilst follow-up calls were made either during the transitional period or after plain packaging had been fully implemented (November 2012)
  4. Both baseline and follow-up calls were made within the first year of plain packaging being fully implemented

At both the baseline and follow-up stages, participants were asked about quitting related cognitions, micro-indicators of concern and quit attempts. Logistic regression was used to analyse the data and participants’ baseline scores were included as predictors for their follow-up scores (after accounting for potential confounders). Essentially, this means that follow-up scores between participants in the four groups could be directly compared, accounting for any differences at baseline. Responses from participants in Groups 2, 3 and 4 were compared with those of the participants in Group 1.

Results

In total, 5,137 participants completed both the baseline and follow-up calls. At follow-up, approximately 6% of participants across all groups had quit smoking. The following results were found for each of outcome measures:

Quitting related cognitions

  • No differences in thoughts about quitting, or plans to quit in the next month were observed between the groups. However, higher intentions to quit were observed among those in Group 3 as compared with those in Group 1

Micro-indicators of concern

  • Participants in Groups 3 and 4 were more likely to conceal their pack than those in Group 1
  • Those in Group 4 reported higher levels of stubbing out cigarettes early than those in Group 1
  • Higher rate of forgoing cigarettes were observed amongst participants in Group 2 than Group 1

Quit attempts

  • More quit attempts were reported among participants in Groups 2 and 4 as compared with those in Group 1

Given that results are likely to be closely scrutinised by researchers, policy makers and the tobacco industry, it is important to carefully consider their implications and not overstate the findings.

Conclusions

This study provides modest statistical evidence that plain packaging in Australia has increased micro-indicators of concern, increased quit attempts and increased some quitting related cognitions among smokers.

The authors describe the outcomes they measured in the current study as being ‘downstream’ from the more immediate effects of plain packaging, which they have found evidence for in their other studies. These include:

It is possible that more substantial changes in the downstream effects such as those measured in this study may take longer to emerge.

Plain packaging: putting these results in context

Investigating the impact of plain packaging in the ‘real-world’ using this pre-post technique has its limitations. Unlike the laboratory, the real-world isn’t tightly controlled and although the researchers tried to account for other factors which may have influenced the results, such as changes in the price of tobacco and other tobacco control measures such as mass media campaigns, it’s impossible to completely control for the effect of these, making causal interpretations difficult.

Obviously we cannot randomise whole countries to either introduce or not introduce plain packaging (which would address these limitations), and examine what happens to smoking prevalence in these countries. Studies like that by Durkin and colleagues are therefore probably the best that we can do in the real world. Moreover, no one piece of research will give us the full picture when it comes to the potential impact of plain packaging.

Although, on their own, these findings do not provide overwhelming support for a beneficial impact of plain packaging, when they are considered together with the other studies in theTobacco Control supplement, and with data from the Australian government (which this year reported record lows in tobacco sales and smoking prevalence) along with findings fromlaboratory-based experiments and surveys, the evidence looks more compelling.

Now that both the UK and Ireland have announced plans to introduce plain packaging in May 2016, with other countries likely to follow suit, it will be important to continue to monitor the longer-term impacts of this tobacco control measure, making use of the wide range of research tools and methodologies available to us.

Plain packaging will become

Links

Primary study

Durbin S, Brennan E, Coomber K, Zacher M, Scollo M, Wakefield M. Short-term changes in quitting-related cognitions and behaviours after the implementation of plain packaging with larger health warnings: findings from a national cohort study with Australian adult smokers. Tobacco Control 2015;24:Suppl 2 ii26–ii32 doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-052058

Other references

Research papers included in the Tobacco Control plain packaging Supplement:

Two paper-based surveys of adolescents:

Six telephone survey-based studies:

One in-depth interview:

One analysis of tobacco retailer journals:

Two observational studies:

Quitting smoking is associated with decreased anxiety, depression and stress, says new systematic review

Posted on by oliviamaynard

It is well known that tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the world (WHO, 2011). However, the associations between smoking and mental health are less well established.

Smokers often want to quit, but the belief that cigarettes can be used to regulate mood can often deter them, and this is especially true for individuals with mental health problems (Zhou et al, 2009; Thompson et al 2005). However, this is somewhat paradoxical because smoking is often associated with poor mental health (Coulthard et al, 2002). So it’s interesting to report on this new study by Taylor et al (2014) who reviewed the current literature evaluating changes in mental health in those who quit smoking compared with those who continued to smoke.

Methods

The authors conducted a systematic review by searching Web of Science, Cochrane, Medline, Embase & PsychINFO, as well as contacting authors for missing data, and translating non-English papers.

Eligibility was determined using the following criteria:

  • Studies took smokers from the general population or from populations with a defined clinical diagnosis
  • They were longitudinal studies collecting data on mental health prior to quit attempts and again 6 weeks after

A meta-analysis was performed using a random effects model to pool the standard mean difference (SMD) between the change in mental health in quitters and continued smokers from baseline to follow-up. The SMD was used, as different scoring systems couldn’t be standardised across studies.   The mental health outcomes they measured were anxiety, depression, mixed anxiety/depression, positive affect, psychological quality of life & stress.

Results of systematic review

After data extraction, 15 full text articles were included:

Study type

11 cohort studies, 14 secondary analyses of cessation interventions, and 1 randomised controlled trial.

Participant population

14 studies included the general population, 3 included patients living with chronic physical condition, 2 with pregnant patients, 1 included postoperative patients, 2 studies included either chronic physical or psychiatric conditions, and 4 studies included patients with psychiatric conditions.

48% of participants were male with a median age of 44, and on average smoked 20 cigarettes per day. The average participant scored as moderately dependent to nicotine on a dependence test.

Results of meta-analysis

Compared with continuing to smoke:

People who quit smoking were less anxious, depressed and stressed than those who continued to smoke

People who quit smoking were less anxious, depressed and stressed than those who continued to smoke

  • Quitting was associated with a decrease in anxiety (SMD -0.37, 95% CI  -0.70 to -0.03; P=0.03)
  • Quitting was associated with a decrease in depression (SMD -0.25, 95% CI -0.37 to -0.12; P<0.001)
  • Quitting was associated with a decrease in mixed anxiety and depression (SMD -0.31, 95% CI -0.47 to -0.14; P<0.001)
  • Quitting was associated with a decrease in stress (SMD -0.27, 95% CI -0.40 to -0.13; P<0.001)
  • Quitting was associated with an improved psychological quality of life (SMD 0.22, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.36; P<0.001)
  • Quitting was associated with increased positive affect (SMD 0.40, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.71; P=0.01)

Subgroup Analyses

  • Analyses for study quality did not change summary estimates
  • Studies which adjusted for covariates showed a larger difference between quitters and those who continued to smoke compared to studies which did not adjust

Additional Analyses

  • There was no evidence that effect size differed across different clinical populations
  • There was no evidence of subgroup differences between study designs
  • The studies were ordered according to length in a forest plot and no clear chronological pattern in effect estimates was found

Discussion

This review shows that quitting smoking is associated with reduced depression, anxiety and stress, and improved psychological quality of life and positive affect compared to continuing to smoke. The strength of the association was similar for all populations; both general and clinical. The authors suggest three possible interpretations of the data:

  1. Quitting smoking results in improved mental health
  2. Improved mental health causes an individual to quit smoking
  3. There is a common factor that explains both the improved mental health and smoking cessation

The authors hypothesise that quitting smoking improves mood is supposed by a biological mechanism caused by brain changes in the nicotinic pathways due to chronic smoking (Wang & Sun, 2005). These brain changes result in low mood (irritation, anxiety, and depressed mood) after smoking a cigarette. While an individual is actually feeling withdrawal symptoms, they are misattributed to low mood, and more cigarettes are smoked to alleviate their symptoms (Benowitz, 1995; Benowitz, 2010).

However, not all of the data supports this interpretation.  For example, a study using Mendelian randomisation- an instrumental variable approach that uses gene relating to smoking behaviour to examine health related outcomes, did not find a causal association between smoking and mental health (Bjorngaard et al 2013).

While this review displays that there are strong associations between quitting smoking and mental health, the authors recommend future studies examining this association to help strengthen causal inferences which come from observation research. The authors suggest further epidemiological studies using Mendelian randomisation, or using statistical analysis of observational data using propensity score matching to reduce the bias of confounding variables.

Conclusion

Many people believe that quitting smoking can have adverse psychiatric effects. This high quality research suggests the opposite

Many people believe that quitting smoking can have adverse psychiatric effects. This high quality research suggests the opposite

These are important findings as smokers can find reassurance in the fact that quitting is likely to result in improved mental wellbeing. Additionally, these findings are important as they show that quitting smoking is likely to improve your mental health if you are mentally ill or mentally well.

Hopefully these findings will help overcome some of the current barriers within the mental health field; for example the continued belief that quitting smoking or certain pharmacological treatments can have adverse psychiatric effects.  See our recent Lee Cook et al (2013) blog, which showed that individuals with mental illness treated as outpatients were more likely to decrease and quit smoking than those in inpatient facilities.

Furthermore, the NICE guidelines on smoking cessation, which we blogged about here, recommend that all NHS hospitals and clinics should become smoke-free, as well as identifying smokers and offering behavioural and pharmacotherapy onsite. Additionally, the guidelines suggest staff should be trained on stop-smoking services and should abstain from smoking on-site themselves (NICE, 2013).

Links

Taylor G et al. Change in mental health after smoking cessation: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2014;348:g1151 doi: 10.1136/bmj.g1151

Coulthard M, Farrell M, Singleton N, Meltzer H. Tobacco, alcohol and drug use and mental health (PDF). Office for National Statistics, 2002.

World Health Organization. WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic. WHO, 2011.

Zhou X, Nonnemaker J, Sherrill B, Gilsenan A, Coste F, West R. Attempts to quit smoking and relapse: factors associated with success or failure from the ATTEMP cohort study (PDF). Addict Behav 2009;34:365-73.

Thompson B, Thompson LA, Thompson J, Fredickson C, Bishop S. Heavy smokers: a qualitative analysis of attitudes and beliefs concerning cessation and continued smoking. Nicotine Tob Res 2003;5:923-33. [PubMed abstract]

Le Cook B, Wayne GF, Kafali EN, Lui Z, Shu C Flore M. Trends in Smoking Among Adults with Mental Illness and Association Between Mental Health Treatment and Smoking Cessation. JAMA. 2014; 311 (2): 172-182. [Abstract]

Smoking cessation: acute, maternity and mental health services: guidance (PDF). NICE, PH48, 27 Nov 2013.

Wang H, Sun X. Desensitized nicotinic receptors in brain. Brain Res Rev 2005;48:420-37. [Abstract]

Benowitz NL. Nicotine addiction. Prim Care 1999;26:611-31 [PubMed abstract]

Benowitz NL. Nicotine addiction. N Engl J Med 2010;362:2295 [Abstract]

Bjorngaard JH, Gunnell D, Elvestad MB, Davey-Smith G, Skorpen F, Krokan H, et al. The causal role of smoking in anxiety and depression: a Mendelian randomization analysis of the HUNT study. Psychol Med 2013;43:711-9 [PubMed abstract]

This article first appeared on the Mental Elf website on 13 March 2014 and is posted by Meg Fluharty. Follow Meg on Twitter @MegEliz_

– See more at: http://www.thementalelf.net/mental-health-conditions/anxiety-disorders/quitting-smoking-is-associated-with-decreased-anxiety-depression-and-stress-says-new-systematic-review/#sthash.z8TIWuMV.dpuf

“Doubt is our product…”

Posted on by Marcus Munafo

Cigarette smoking is addictive. Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Today these statements are uncontroversial, but it’s easy to forget that this was not the case until relatively recently. The first studies reporting a link between smoking and lung cancer appeared in the 1950’s (although scientists in Germany had reported a link earlier), while the addictiveness of tobacco, and the isolation of nicotine as the principal addictive constituent, was not established until some time later. Part of the reason for this is simply that scientific progress is generally slow, and scientists themselves are typically not the kind of people to get ahead of themselves.

However, another factor is that at every stage the tobacco industry has resisted the scientific evidence that has indicated the harms associated with the use of its products. One way in which it has done this is by suggesting that there is uncertainty around the core evidence base used to support tobacco control efforts. A 1969 Brown and Williamson document outlines this strategy: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public”.

This approach seeks to “neutralize the influence of academic scientists”, and has since been adopted more widely by other lobby groups. The energy industry has used a similar approach in response to consensus among climate scientists on the role of human activity in climate change. But what’s the problem? There are always a number of ways to interpret data, scientists will hold different theoretical positions despite being in possession of the same basic facts, people are entitled to their opinion… That’s fine, but the tobacco industry goes beyond this and actively misrepresents the facts. Why do I care? Because recently our research was misrepresented in this way…

There is ongoing debate around whether to introduce standardised packaging for tobacco products. Public health researchers mostly favour it, while the tobacco industry is opposed to it. No particular surprises there, but there’s a need for more research to inform the debate. We have done some research here in Bristol suggesting that standardised packs increase the prominence of health warnings in non-smokers and light smokers. Interestingly, we didn’t see this in regular smokers. This research contributed to the recent European Commission Tobacco Products Directive and the UK government consultation on standardised packaging. British American Tobacco (BAT) submitted a response to this consultation, which cited our research and said:

“The researchers concluded that daily smokers exhibited more eye movements towards health warnings when the pack was branded than when it was plain, but the opposite was true for non-smokers and non-daily smokers”.

We didn’t find that, and we didn’t say that. This isn’t a matter of interpretation or opinion – this is simple misrepresentation. What we actually concluded was:

“…among non-smokers and weekly … smokers, plain packaging increases visual attention towards health warning information and away from brand information. This effect is not observed among daily (i.e. established) cigarette smokers”.

In other words, standardised packaging increases the prominence of health warnings in non-smokers and light smokers, but don’t seem to have any effect in daily smokers. This is an important difference compared to how BAT represents this research. In their response to the consultation, BAT argues that “plain packaging may actually reduce smokers’ attention to warnings”. Of course it’s possible that there could be negative unintended consequences to standardised packaging, but there is no evidence in our study for this.

Why does this matter? Maybe it doesn’t – people get misrepresented all the time. But scientists produce data and ideas, the latter ideally based on the former, and so to misrepresent their conclusions is fundamentally distorting. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all the time, including in media coverage of scientists’ work. This often makes scientists less willing to engage in important debates where they could make a valuable contribution. If this happens, then those with clear vested interests will succeed in removing valuable evidence from these debates. More importantly, this example illustrates why it’s vital that scientists do engage with the public and the media. Only by doing so can scientists make sure that their research is accurately represented, and that attempts to misrepresent their research are challenged.

As the health effects of smoking became apparent, successive governments acted to reduce the prevalence of smoking in the population. In the United Kingdom these efforts have been pretty successful – the overall prevalence of smoking is currently around 20%, down from a peak of over 50% in the 1950’s. This is due to restrictions on tobacco advertising, increases in taxation on tobacco products, and other tobacco control measures, as well as public health campaigns to increase awareness of the health consequences of tobacco use and greater availability of services to help people stop smoking. We want these policies to be evidence-based, and we don’t want this evidence to be knowingly distorted. Scientists have an important part to play in this.

Posted by Marcus Munafo @MarcusMunafo

 

Health Technology Assessment report finds computer and other electronic aids can help people stop smoking

Posted on by Marcus Munafo
Smoking continues to be the greatest single preventable cause of premature illness and death in developed countries. Although rates of smoking have fallen, over 20% of the adult population in the UK continues to smoke. Anything which can be done to help people stop smoking will therefore have substantial public health benefits.

More and more people now have access to computers and other electronic devices (such as mobile ‘phones), and there is growing interest in whether these can be used to prompt or support attempts to stop smoking. This could be by providing a prompt to quit, reaching smokers who would otherwise use no support, and/or supporting the degree to which people use their smoking cessation medication (e.g., nicotine replacement therapy).

A recent Health Technology Assessment review assessed the effectiveness of internet sites, computer programs, mobile telephone text messages and other electronic aids for helping smokers to quit, and/or to reduce relapse to smoking among those who had quit.

Methods

The reviewers conducted a systematic review of the literature from 1980 to 2009 and found 60 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs evaluating smoking cessation programmes that utilised computer, internet, mobile telephone or other electronic aids. The review was restricted to studies of adult smokers.

The primary outcomes were smoking abstinence, measured in two ways: Point prevalence abstinence and prolonged abstinence. The first is typically available in more studies (because it is easier to measure) but a rather liberal measure of abstinence (since the smoker need only be abstinent at the point the assessment is made to count as having quit). The latter is more conservative (since it requires the smoker to have been abstinent for an extended period to count as having quit), and is generally the preferred measure. Smoking abstinence at the longest follow-up available in each study was used, again because this is most conservative.

Results

Combining the data from the 60 trials indicated that, overall, the use of computer and other electronic aids increased quit rates for both prolonged (pooled RR = 1.32, 95% CI 1.21 to 1.45) and point prevalence (pooled RR = 1.14, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.22) abstinence at longest follow-up,  compared with no intervention or generic self-help materials.

The authors also looked at whether studies which aided cessation differed from those which prompted cessation, and found no evidence of any difference in the effect size between these. The effectiveness of the interventions also did not appear to vary with respect to mode of delivery or the concurrent use non-electronic co-interventions (e.g., nicotine replacement therapies).

Conclusions

Computer and other electronic aids do indeed increase the likelihood of cessation compared with no intervention or generic self-help materials, but the effect is small

The review concluded that computer and other electronic aids do indeed increase the likelihood of cessation compared with no intervention or generic self-help materials, but the effect is small. However, even a small effect is likely to have important public health benefits, given the large number of people who smoke and the impact of smoking on health. The authors also note that uncertainty remains around the comparative effectiveness of different types of electronic intervention, which will require further study.

The authors argue that further research is needed on the relative benefits of different forms of delivery for electronic aids, the content of delivery, and the acceptability of these technologies for smoking cessation with subpopulations of smokers, particularly disadvantaged groups. More evidence is also required on how electronic aids developed and tested in research settings are applied in routine practice and in the community.

Link

Chen YF, Madan J, Welton N, Yahaya I, Aveyard P, Bauld L, Wang D, Fry-Smith A, Munafò MR. Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of computer and other electronic aids for smoking cessation: a systematic review and network meta-analysis (PDF). Health Technol Assess 2012; 16(38): 1-205, iii-v. doi: 10.3310/hta16380.

This article first appeared on the Mental Elf website on 11th March 2013 and is posted by Marcus Munafo