Tobacco-caused disease is the leading cause of death for patients with alcoholism, but a study led by The Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center brings hope to non-depressed, recovering alcoholics who also smoke - individualized nicotine patch therapy. The findings were published in the July issue of Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
"Our findings show that nicotine patch dosage can be adjusted to provide more effective treatment for smokers with a history of alcoholism," says Richard Hurt, M.D., Mayo Clinic physician and lead investigator of the study. "This is good news for recovering alcoholic smokers who have had difficulty stopping smoking after successfully dealing with their drinking."
Alcoholics are statistically heavier smokers and traditionally have had much more trouble stopping smoking using standard-dose nicotine patch therapy. This is the first study to use serum cotinine (a meta-bolic byproduct of nicotine) concentration in smokers with sustained remission from alcohol dependence (greater than 12 months with no relapse for drug or alcohol abuse) to determine the nicotine patch dosages. Investigators hoped to show that maintaining a more consistent level of serum cotinine through customized nicotine replacement therapy would enable more smokers to quit for good, and results from this initial study are positive in this group of smokers.