E-cigarettes can safely help people quit smoking traditional cigarettes, a new study says.
People who used e-cigarettes to stop smoking had nearly twice the one-year abstinence rate of those who used nicotine-replacement therapy, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
“It is the first study to use the newest form of e-cigarette in a long-term trial, and compare it to FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy in a randomized trial,” Belinda Borrelli, who runs the Center for Behavioral Science Research at Boston University, told UPI.
“Other strengths of the study include biochemical verification of smoking outcomes — the nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) arm had a choice of products (gum, patch, etc) and could switch between them if they wanted, the e-cig arm had a choice of e-liquids, and it was a pragmatic trial conducted in a real-world setting.”
Still, NRTs have a long-term record of success, with six-month abstinence rates of about 26 percent and one-year rates of 20 percent.
