An antidepressant drug delivered through a skin patch is no better than placebo for helping people to quit smoking according to a new study.
The drug, Eldepryl (which has the generic name selegiline), is used in pill and patch form to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression, and dementia.
Selegiline can help maintain keep levels of brain chemicals like dopamine strong because they are reduced when nicotine becomes absent.
“That’s why we hoped that selegiline might reduce the cravings and urges associated with quitting and thus help make it easier to quit,” said Dr. Joel D. Killen of Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, one of the researchers who conducted the study.
Killen and his colleagues randomly gave 243 adult smokers a patch containing either selegiline or a placebo patch for further investigation.
The participants were told to start using the patch on the day they made the decision to quit smoking and to then use one patch every 24 hours for eight weeks.
When the eight weeks had ended, 26 percent of the patients who used a selegiline patch had been abstinent for at least the past week but almost 30 percent of the placebo group had not smoked for the same period of time.
At 25 weeks, 17 percent of the selegiline group and 19 percent of the placebo group were abstinent and around 20 percent of people in both groups were abstinent after 52 weeks.
However, gender differences were evident with 28 percent of women abstinent at 52 weeks compared to 16 percent of men.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 percent of US adults, approximately 46 million people, smoke and often multiple attempts are required before a smoker successfully quits.
