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Title: Pooled Data Show Zyban (Bupropion) Helps People Across a Range of Populations Kick Smoking Habit: Presented at ERS

"Pooled Data Show Zyban (Bupropion) Helps People Across a Range of Populations Kick Smoking Habit: Presented at ERS"

By Cameron Johnston Special to DG News STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN -- September 18, 2002 -- A pooled analysis of data from five trials shows that bupropion (Zyban SR, GSK) helps people across a range of lifestyles kick the cigarette habit. In a presentation here Sep. 17th at the 12th annual meeting of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), Dr. Andre Perruchoud, of the department of internal medicine at the University Clinic, in Basel, Switzerland, said the data "show very similar effects in different smoking populations." The trials -- which had been previously published -- included people with prior heart attacks and/or heart disease, healthcare professionals, the general smoking population, people who used a nicotine patch simultaneously, and those involved in the early dose-response trials. Across the trials, four-week cessation rates ranged from a low of 36 percent in the dose-response study to a high of 50 percent among healthcare professionals. Approximately one-quarter of subjects treated with bupropion SR remained abstinent at the end of one year, which Dr. Perruchoud said remains the best success rate for any pharmacological smoking cessation program to date. Subjects who had the greatest success in the short term were those who combined nicotine patch therapy with bupropion. Fifty-two percent were still abstinent at 12 weeks, although this figure declined toward the end of the year-long study. Dr. Perruchoud said one figure that was puzzling, and one he could not explain, was that in the healthcare professionals study, even the placebo group had a 30 percent abstinence rate at the end of one year. This, he speculated, might have been due to increased peer pressure and support among other healthcare workers at the clinics where these individuals were recruited, or there might have been a greater awareness on their part of the implications of the randomisation procedure. Subjects taking bupropion dropped out of the various studies twice as frequently as those in the placebo groups did, but otherwise, buproprion showed highly consistent results over a wide range of lifestyles, Dr. Perruchoud said.

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