NEW TREATMENT TO STOP SMOKING

Report #6455 4/30/95

35 million Americans still smoke because nicotine is one of the most addicting habits in humans. A new treatment may help to cure that addiction.

When most habitual smokers can't get nicotine, they lose their ability to concentrate, they feel irritable and jittery, and they need to smoke. Taking nicotine in a patch on their skin or a gum in their mouths satisfies their needs for nicotine and prevents these symptoms. So nicotine patches and gums help people to stop smoking temporarily. However, they still have to get off the nicotine after they stop smoking so most of the people who use nicotine patches and gums, resume smoking within a year because they have not cured their addiction to nicotine.

Jed Rose of Duke University has discovered that after 6 weeks of taking a nicotine skin patch with mecamylamine pills, a drug that blocks the effects of nicotine, helped more than one third of smokers to stop smoking one year later. In high doses, both nicotine and mecamylamine have horrible side effects. High doses of nicotine cause high blood pressure, a fast thumping heart beat and shakiness. High doses of mecamylamine cause shakiness, dizziness, fainting constipation and even convulsions. However, when the two drugs are combined in low doses, people trying to stop smoking seldom suffered side effects and many were not smoking one year later. The recommended doses were standard nicotine skin patches daily and 2.5 mg of mecamylamine twice a day.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News