Latest study from Hollings Cancer Center in the US: e-cigarettes do have value as a smoking cessatio

Researchers at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center in South Carolina, US, have just released a new study showing that e-cigarettes do have value as a smoking cessation aid. The study is reportedly one of the largest e-cigarette trials in the United States to date, recruiting smokers from 11 cities across the country and running over four years.

Matthew Carpenter, first author of the paper published in Clinical Medicine and co-leader of Hollings’ Cancer Control Research Program, said: “While e-cigarettes are not a magic solution for quitting smoking, we were surprised to find that every hypothesis tested in the study was confirmed. E-cigarettes helped trial participants quit combustible cigarettes—even among participants who had said beforehand that they had no intention of quitting.”

“It’s rare for nearly every hypothesis in a trial to be proven correct,” Carpenter said. “Regardless of how the outside world views e-cigarettes, those who received e-cigarette products showed higher quit rates and fewer health harms than those who did not receive e-cigarette products.”

Carpenter and his colleagues designed the trial in a more scientific and natural way, aiming to reflect real-world conditions as closely as possible.

Carpenter said that previous studies showing the smoking cessation benefits of e-cigarettes were highly structured. Those studies typically recruited people who already wanted to quit smoking and provided detailed instructions on how to use e-cigarettes.

Real-world conditions, however, are not so structured. If people who do not intend to quit smoking use e-cigarettes and ultimately succeed in quitting, that can provide even more convincing evidence of their smoking cessation effect.

Therefore, Carpenter’s study recruited both smokers who wanted to quit and those who did not, while giving them minimal guidance on how to use e-cigarettes, in order to observe their cessation effects under real-life conditions. The trial was divided into an e-cigarette group and a control group: the e-cigarette group was given access to e-cigarettes, while the control group was not provided with them.

The study showed that people in the e-cigarette group were more likely to report completely quitting combustible cigarettes. They were also more likely to report reducing the number of cigarettes smoked per day and increasing the number of “quit attempts.” “Quit attempts are an important measure, because people usually need multiple attempts before they successfully quit smoking.”

Participants in the study came from 11 cities across the United States, and the trial lasted four years. The study will provide another data point for the public health community and policymakers as they decide how to address e-cigarettes.

“No one wants children to use e-cigarettes, and we should do everything we can to prevent that from happening. But we should not deny adult smokers who want to quit access to e-cigarettes,” Carpenter said.