Brain Nicotine Receptor Density & Response to Nicotine Patch
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
1969-12-31
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Even though the health risks and societal costs of cigarette smoking are well-known, roughly
19.8% of American adults continue to smoke. While most smokers endorse a desire to quit, very
few (< 5%) will actually quit in a given year without treatment, and only about 20-25%
achieve abstinence after 6 months or more of effective treatment. Therefore, there continues
to be a vital need to improve outcomes for cigarette smokers seeking treatment. Current
first-line medications for Tobacco Dependence include nicotine replacement therapies (such as
the patch, gum, lozenge, nasal spray, and inhaler), varenicline HCl (Chantix), and bupropion
HCl (Zyban), with the current standard of care in most treatment settings being to choose
specific medications based primarily on availability, ease of use, and patient preference.
The goal of the proposed research is to improve the delivery of smoking cessation treatment
by determining if pre-treatment nicotine receptor density in cigarette smokers is associated
with smoking cessation outcome with the standard nicotine patch taper. The study's main
hypothesis is that cigarette smokers with less pre-treatment upregulation of nicotine
receptors will have a greater likelihood of quitting smoking from a standard course of
nicotine patch treatment than smokers with more up-regulation of these receptors. Positron
emission tomography (PET) will be used to test this hypothesis.