Natural Treatment Beats Nicotine for Quitting Smoking

It’s cheaper than nicotine replacement therapy, it’s more effective than nicotine replacement therapy, you want to quit smoking, but you’ve never heard of it! Cytisine is better than nicotine for quitting smoking. . . .

Cytisine is an alkyolid found in the very large Fabacaea family of plants. The Fabacaea are in the legume, or bean, family and include soy, peanut and alfalfa. Amazingly, there have already been at least four systematic reviews that have demonstrated that cytisine is better than a placebo for quitting, but never, until now, has there been a study comparing cytisine to nicotine replacement therapy.

This controlled study helped 1,310 smokers to quit by giving them either cytisine for twenty-five days or nicotine replacement therapy–in the form of nicotine patches, gum and/or lozenges–for eight weeks.

The primary measure of success was how many smokers had quit at the end of a month. And the more successful treatment was the cytisine: at the one month mark, 40% of the cytisine group had quit versus 31% of the nicotine group. The cytisine continued to be more effective at the two month and six month marks: the latest time the researchers checked.

There were slightly more adverse events in the cytisine group, but the majority were nonserious, and 80% of cytisine users who experienced an adverse event said they would still recommend it. Earlier placebo-controlled studies found that there were not significantly more adverse events on cytisine than on placbeo.

This is very exciting news for smokers.

NEJM 2014;371:2353-62