Use of e-cigarettes along with smoking cessation likely to help quit smoking

Smoking cessation counselling, plus the take of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking more successfully than the ones who received councelling but did not use e-cigarettes, suggests a new study.

In the clinical trial presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC), researchers, however, cautioned, that the health effects of e-cigarettes are unknown, and they should not be used for any purpose other than smoking cessation.

At 12 weeks, 21.9% of participants given nicotine-containing e-cigarettes had quit smoking, 17.3% of participants given non-nicotine e-cigarettes had quit and 9.1% of participants given only counselling had quit. Overall, those using nicotine-containing e-cigarettes were 2.4 times more likely to quit than those who did not vape at all.

"These findings show that nicotine e-cigarettes are effective for smoking cessation in the short term," said Mark J. Eisenberg, MD, MPH, a cardiologist at the Jewish General Hospital, professor of medicine at McGill University and the study's lead author.

"Vaping with counselling is more effective than counselling alone, although it's not a magic bullet for smoking cessation," Eisenberg added.

The new trial was designed to reflect the real-world conditions lifelong smokers face when attempting to quit.

The research had participants from 17 sites in Canada who had smoked for an average of 35 years.

One-third of the participants were assigned to receive e-cigarettes containing nicotine, one-third received e-cigarettes without nicotine and one-third did not receive an e-cigarette.

Compared to baseline smoking rates of 21 cigarettes per day, participants who received nicotine e-cigarettes reduced their daily cigarette consumption by 13 cigarettes per day compared to 11 among participants receiving non-nicotine e-cigarettes and seven among those receiving counselling alone.