Gender differences in smoking cessation after 3 years in the Lung Health Study.

Abstract

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.

Menstrual Phase and Depressive Symptoms Differences in Physiological Response to Nicotine Following Acute Smoking Abstinence

“…Second, it is unknown how these observations may apply to smoking cessation efforts. It is well known that women receive less benefit from NRT (e.g., Bjornson et al, 1995;Perkins & Scott, 2008). Our results suggest that women may receive less beneficial effects from nicotine replacement during the luteal phase because lower levels of nicotine are achieved, accounting for higher relapse in this phase in studies that have used the nicotine patch.…”

Selection and description of cancer clinical trials participants—Science or happenstance?

“…31 Bjornsen et al found that gender did not predict nonsmoking at 12 months after smoking cessation intervention but that men had a higher rate of sustained nonsmoking at 36 months after intervention. 32 Those authors also found a higher recurrence rate among women between 12 months and 36 months after intervention and that women who lived with smokers were less likely to quit than men who lived with smokers. These results suggest the need for gender specific smoking-cessation interventions.…”

Comparing gain- and loss-framed messages for smoking cessation with sustained-release bupropion: A randomized controlled trial.

“…To examine treatment effects, we analyzed between-groups differences in the smoking cessation outcomes (continuous and end of treatment 7-day point prevalence abstinence) using logistic regression analyses, with the gain-framed compared with the loss-framed condition as a main effect. Time-to-event (i.e., time to first cigarette) analyses were performed using the Kaplan-Meier method for data display and the maximum likelihood method for comparison of the groups with missing data censored.Previous research has suggested that women may be less successful in quitting smoking than men (Bjornson et al, 1995;Royce, Corbett, Sorensen, & Ockene, 1997;Scharf & Shiffman, 2004;Swan, Jack, & Ward, 1997), so main effects for gender along with the interaction of gender and message framing were examined in all regression models. These two main effects (message framing and gender) and their interaction (Message Framing × Gender) were tested together in single regression models for all smoking outcome analyses.…”