OBJECTIVES. An analysis of gender differences in smoking cessation was conducted among 3923 participants in the Special Intervention group of the Lung Health Study. This report focuses on gender differences in sustained quit rates at 12 and 36 months. METHODS. Special Intervention participants were offered a 12-session, 12-week smoking cessation program using nicotine gum and were followed for 3 years. Self-reported smoking status was validated with carbon monoxide and salivary cotinine. RESULTS. Men had higher sustained quit rates at 12 and 36 months; gender differences were found in baseline variables that also predicted sustained abstinence; and controlling for selected baseline variables reduced the association between gender and sustained abstinence. When other variables were controlled, gender predicted sustained abstinence at 36 months (odds ratio [OR] = 1.24, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.04, 1.48) but not 12 months (OR = 1.08, 95% CI = 0.92, 1.27), reflecting more late relapse among women. CONCLUSIONS. Demographics and smoking history were more important than gender per se in sustained smoking cessation in the Lung Health Study. Programs tailoring smoking cessation by gender need to include coping skills for problems associated with less education and social support and for improving persistence with quit attempts.
Previous findings from the Lung Health Study have shown that smoking cessation and sustained abstinence substantially reduce the rate of decline in forced expiratory volume (FEV1) among smokers with early chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) when compared with continuing smoking. Intermittent quitters demonstrated rates of FEV1 decline intermediate between those of sustained quitters and continuing smokers.In this study, data from 1,980 participants were analysed from 10 centres of the Lung Health Study in the USA and Canada. All participants were smokers with mild-to-moderate COPD who were unable to quit smoking at any time during the 1st yr of the study.No linear relationship was found between reduction in cigarettes per day and changes in FEV1 during the 1st yr of the study. However, examination of the data revealed that this relationship was nonlinear. Further analysis found that smokers who reduced their cigarettes per day to very low amounts had smaller declines in FEV1 than those who did not. Reduction in cigarettes per day was associated with only minimal changes in the presence of chronic respiratory symptoms.In conclusion, compensatory changes in smoking behaviour may account for the limited and unpredictable impact of smoking reduction on lung function decline and symptom prevalence when compared with smoking cessation.KEYWORDS: Forced expiratory volume in one second, smoking cessation, smoking reduction S ustained smoking cessation substantially reduces the smoking-related accelerated rate of decline in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and decreases the frequency of chronic respiratory symptoms among smokers with early chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) when compared with continuing smokers [1][2][3]. Intermittent quitting is associated with rates of FEV1 decline intermediate between those observed in sustained quitters and continuing smokers [4]. Conversely, it is not known whether partial reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked per day among continuing smokers is associated with improvement in the subsequent course of lung function decline when compared with that observed when daily consumption remains unchanged. For smokers with COPD who find it difficult to quit smoking entirely this is an important issue, since they may assume that smoking reduction is an effective alternative strategy for slowing disease progression. In the only previous long-term prospective study of smoking reduction (from o15 to ,15 cigarettes?day -1 ) on the rate of FEV1 decline, smokers ,55 yrs showed a significant reduction in FEV1 decline, although older smokers did not [5]. In that study, only two measurements of lung function were performed at an interval of 5 yrs and details of changes in the smoking rate, including the timing of changes in smoking amount relative to the measurement of lung function, were not reported.The present analysis examines the relationship between smoking reduction and change in FEV1 in a subset of the participants in the Lung Health Study, a large...
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