of pharmacogenetic and genomic investigations of smoking cessation and its translation to primary care.
IntroductionTobacco smoking remains a leading cause of preventable death internationally, with worldwide smoking-attributable deaths approaching 10 million annually by 2030(Peto et al., 1996. Most smokers in developed countries present in primary care settings, providing an opportunity for general practitioners (GPs) to treat patients with nicotine dependence, but even with major advances in pharmacotherapy in recent decades, there remains room for improvement (Fiore et al., 2000(Fiore et al., , 2008. In a coordinated effort to advance the state of the science, a transdisciplinary research team, the General Practice Research Group (GPRG), embarked on an initiative to explore genetic moderation of drug response for smoking cessation.
ObjectivesA formative review, published at the outset of the present project, described its conceptual framework (Walton, Johnstone, Munafò, Neville, & Griffiths, 2001). The objectives of this summative article are to (a) provide an historical narrative of the rationale, developmental, and deductive process that guided the GPRG's pharmacogenetic smoking cessation research initiative; (b) present new and extant pharmacogenetic data in full; and (c) synthesize results and apply theoretical and practical lessons learned toward proposed best-practice research models to guide future translation to clinical practice.
AbstractIntroduction: Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. However, the efficacy of available first-line therapies remains low, particularly in primary care practice where most smokers seek and receive treatment. These observations reinforce the notion that 'one size fits all' smoking cessation therapies may not be optimal. Therefore, a translational research effort was launched by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (later Cancer Research UK) General Practice Research Group, who led a decade-long research enterprise that examined the influence of pharmacological hypothesis-driven research into genetic influences on drug response for smoking cessation with transdermal nicotine replacement therapy in general practice.Methods: New and previously published smoking cessation genetic association results of 30 candidate gene polymorphisms genotyped for participants in two transdermal nicotine replacement clinical trials based in UK general practices, which employed an intention to analyze approach.Results: By this high bar, one of the polymorphisms (COMT rs4680) was robust to correction for multiple comparisons. Moreover, future research directions are outlined; and lessons learned as well as best-practice models for designing, analyzing, and translating results into clinical practice are proposed.
Conclusions:The results and lessons learned from this general practice-based pharmacogenetic research programme provide transportable insights at the transition to the second generation