February 7, 2022

expert reaction to ecigs for quitting

A study, published in Tobacco Control, looked at ecigs for quitting smoking.

Prof John Britton, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology, University of Nottingham, said: 

“The findings of this observational study of quitting and e-cigarette use in the USA are fundamentally flawed by confounding by severity, whereby the heaviest (most addicted) smokers, having tried and failed to quit using NRT or other treatments in the past, or who have declined to try to quit in the past, then try e-cigarettes.

“This is probably why they conflict with the findings of meta-analyses of the multiple, well-designed clinical trials that have demonstrated that e-cigarettes are effective quitting aids, and which led to the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommending e-cigarettes to help smokers to quit in guidance published at the end of 2021.”

‘Effectiveness of e-cigarettes as aids for smoking cessation: evidence from the PATH Study cohort, 2017–2019’ by Ruifeng Chen et al. was published in Tobacco Control at 23.30 UK time on Monday 7 February 2022.

DOI: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056901

Declared interests

None received.