After a steady decline for the last 50 years, the prevalence of tobacco use in the United States has reached a plateau of approximately 23%. Currently available treatments among adults are expensive and not efficacious for all tobacco users. New pharmacologic agents need to be developed and tested to achieve the Healthy People 2010 goal of less than 12% adult tobacco use prevalence. ? ? Bupropion, an FDA approved agent for tobacco cessation, acts by inhibiting central synaptosomal reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine. A widely used herbal antidepressant, St. John's Wort (SJW), shares a similar mechanism of action and is effective for treating mild to moderate depression. SJW is well tolerated, available over the counter, and is significantly less expensive than the established treatments for tobacco dependence. ? ? To date, no prospective clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of SJW for the treatment of tobacco use has been published. We propose to evaluate the efficacy of SJW for decreasing nicotine withdrawal symptoms and for increasing tobacco abstinence in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, three-arm, parallel group, dose-ranging clinical trial. Participants (N=60) will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups and will receive a twelve-week course of SJW 900 mg per day, 1800 mg per day, or a matching placebo. ? ? This proposal is submitted as an R21 that is responsive to the NCCAM program announcement ? PAR-03-153. This study is anticipated to provide the data needed to develop a larger randomized controlled clinical trial submitted through the R01 funding mechanism to NCCAM. ? ?
| Sood, Amit; Ebbert, Jon O; Prasad, Kavita et al. (2010) A randomized clinical trial of St. John's wort for smoking cessation. J Altern Complement Med 16:761-7 |
