Smoking cessation in adolescence

Smoking cigarettes continues to remain a major health challenge to society today. During the risk taking behaviour phase of young adult hood, many experiment with cigarettes. This is often the beginning of the development of life long addiction. Fanshawe TR et al [Cochrane data base 2017 DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003289.pub6 ] concluded that there is limited evidence that either behavioural support or smoking cessation medication increases the proportion of young people that stop smoking in the long-term. They felt that findings were most promising for group-based behavioural interventions and there continues to be a need for well-designed, adequately powered, randomised controlled trials of interventions for this population of smokers. Varenicline is a partial agonist of α₄β₂ nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and is the most recently approved drug for smoking cessation in the adult smoking population with good evidence to support its use. The risk is that these data are extrapolated into the...

from Archives of Disease in Childhood current issue https://ift.tt/3dJAqKZ