An exploratory randomized controlled trial of a novel high-school-based smoking cessation intervention for adolescent smokers using abstinence-contingent incentives and cognitive behavioral therapy.

BACKGROUND: There are few effective smoking cessation interventions for adolescent smokers. We developed a novel intervention to motivate tobacco use behavior change by (1) enhancing desire to quit through the use of abstinence-contingent incentives (CM), (2) increasing cessation skills through the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and (3) removing cessation barriers through delivery within high schools. METHODS: An exploratory four-week, randomized controlled trial was conducted in Connecticut high schools to dismantle the independent and combined effects of CM and CBT; smokers received CM alone, CBT alone, or CM+CBT. Participants included 82 adolescent smokers seeking smoking cessation treatment. The primary outcome was seven-day end-of-treatment (EOT) point prevalence (PP) abstinence, determined using self-reports confirmed using urine cotinine levels. Secondary outcomes included one-day EOT PP abstinence and cigarette use during treatment and follow up. RESULTS: Among participants who initiated treatment (n=72), group differences in seven-day EOT-PP abstinence were observed (χ(2)=10.48, p<0.01) with higher abstinence in the CM+CBT (36.7%) and CM (36.3%) conditions when compared with CBT (0%). One-day EOT-PP abstinence evidenced similar effects (χ(2)=10.39, p<0.01; CM+CBT: 43%, CM: 43%, CBT: 4.3%). Survival analyses indicated differences in time to first cigarette during treatment (χ(2)=8.73, p=0.003; CBT: Day 3, CM: Day 9, CM+CBT: Day 20). At one- and three-month follow ups, while no differences were observed, the CM alone group had the slowest increase in cigarette use. CONCLUSIONS: High-school, incentive-based smoking cessation interventions produce high rates of short-term abstinence among adolescent smokers; adding cognitive behavioral therapy does not appear to further enhance outcomes.

Prenatal hazardous substance use and adverse birth outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: Assess the relative effects of a variety of illicit and licit drugs on risk for adverse birth outcomes. METHODS: We used data from two large prospective investigations, and a novel analytic method, recursive partitioning class analysis to identify risk factors associated with preterm birth and delivering a small for gestational age infant. RESULTS: Compared to cocaine and opiate non-users, cocaine users were 3.53 times as likely (95% CI: 1.65-7.56; p = 0.001) and opiate users 2.86 times as likely (95% CI: 1.11-7.36; p = 0.03) to deliver preterm. The odds of delivering a small for gestational age infant for women who smoked more than two cigarettes daily was 3.74, (95% CI: 2.47-5.65; p<0.0001) compared to women who smoked two or less cigarettes daily and had one previous child. Similarly, less educated, nulliparous women who smoked two or fewer cigarettes daily were 4.12 times as likely (95% CI: 2.04-8.34; p < 0.0001) to have a small for gestational age infant. CONCLUSIONS: Among our covariates, prenatal cocaine and opiate use are the predominant risk factors for preterm birth; while tobacco use was the primary risk factor predicting small for gestational age at delivery. Multi-substance use did not substantially increase risk of adverse birth outcomes over these risk factors.

Mindfulness training for smoking cessation: results from a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the world, and long-term abstinence rates remain modest. Mindfulness training (MT) has begun to show benefits in a number of psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety and more recently, in addictions. However, MT has not been evaluated for smoking cessation through randomized clinical trials. METHODS: 88 treatment-seeking, nicotine-dependent adults who were smoking an average of 20cigarettes/day were randomly assigned to receive MT or the American Lung Association's freedom from smoking (FFS) treatment. Both treatments were delivered twice weekly over 4 weeks (eight sessions total) in a group format. The primary outcomes were expired-air carbon monoxide-confirmed 7-day point prevalence abstinence and number of cigarettes/day at the end of the 4-week treatment and at a follow-up interview at week 17. RESULTS: 88% of individuals received MT and 84% of individuals received FFS completed treatment. Compared to those randomized to the FFS intervention, individuals who received MT showed a greater rate of reduction in cigarette use during treatment and maintained these gains during follow-up (F=11.11, p=.001). They also exhibited a trend toward greater point prevalence abstinence rate at the end of treatment (36% vs. 15%, p=.063), which was significant at the 17-week follow-up (31% vs. 6%, p=.012). CONCLUSIONS: This initial trial of mindfulness training may confer benefits greater than those associated with current standard treatments for smoking cessation.

Screening for prenatal substance use: development of the Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale.

OBJECTIVE: To report on the development of a questionnaire to screen for hazardous substance use in pregnant women and to compare the performance of the questionnaire with other drug and alcohol measures. METHODS: Pregnant women were administered a modified TWEAK (Tolerance, Worried, Eye-openers, Amnesia, K[C] Cut Down) questionnaire, the 4Ps Plus questionnaire, items from the Addiction Severity Index, and two questions about domestic violence (N=2,684). The sample was divided into "training" (n=1,610) and "validation" (n=1,074) subsamples. We applied recursive partitioning class analysis to the responses from individuals in the training subsample that resulted in a three-item Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale. We examined sensitivity, specificity, and the fit of logistic regression models in the validation subsample to compare the performance of the Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale with the modified TWEAK and various scoring algorithms of the 4Ps. RESULTS: The Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale is comprised of three informative questions that can be scored for high- or low-risk populations. The Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale algorithm for low-risk populations was mostly highly predictive of substance use in the validation subsample (Akaike's Information Criterion=579.75, Nagelkerke R=0.27) with high sensitivity (91%) and adequate specificity (67%). The high-risk algorithm had lower sensitivity (57%) but higher specificity (88%). CONCLUSION: The Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale is simple and flexible with good sensitivity and specificity. The Substance Use Risk Profile-Pregnancy scale can potentially detect a range of substances that may be abused. Clinicians need to further assess women with a positive screen to identify those who require treatment for alcohol or illicit substance use in pregnancy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: III.

D-Cycloserine attenuates reactivity to smoking cues in nicotine dependent smokers: a pilot investigation.

Increasing evidence indicates that smoking cues contribute to nicotine self-administration and attenuating conditioned reactivity to smoking cues may aid abstinence of smoking and prevention of smoking relapse in individuals with nicotine dependence. Based on prior studies showing that the partial N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) agonist D-cycloserine (DCS) facilitates extinction of learned fear during behavioral exposure therapy in humans and facilitates extinction of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference in animals, we evaluated whether DCS would have potential for reducing reactivity to smoking cues when combined with cue exposure treatment in humans with nicotine dependence. In this double-blind placebo-controlled pilot laboratory study, 25 smokers were recruited from the general community and randomized to DCS or placebo, plus cue exposure therapy. DCS significantly attenuated smoking cue reactivity in response to in-vivo smoking cues based on physiological reactivity and subjective urge-to-smoke ratings and led to a significantly smaller expired carbon monoxide (CO) level at the one-week follow-up compared to placebo, although exploratory analyses indicated no effect on smoking behavior overall. These findings provide promising support for DCS combined with cue exposure therapy in attenuating conditioned reactivity to smoking cues.

Serious adverse events in randomized psychosocial treatment studies: safety or arbitrary edicts?

Human subjects protection policies developed for pharmaceutical trials are now being widely applied to psychosocial intervention studies. This study examined occurrences of serious adverse events (SAEs) reported in multicenter psychosocial trials of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network. Substance-abusing participants (N = 1,687) were randomized to standard care or standard care plus either contingency management or motivational enhancement. Twelve percent of participants experienced 1 or more SAEs during the 27,198 person-weeks of follow-up. Of the 260 SAEs recorded, none were judged by the data safety monitoring board to be study related, and there were no significant differences between experimental and control conditions in SAE incidence rates. These data underscore the need to reconsider the rationale behind, and appropriate methods for, monitoring safety during psychosocial therapy trials.

Combining cognitive behavioral therapy with contingency management for smoking cessation in adolescent smokers: a preliminary comparison of two different CBT formats.

This pilot study evaluated the optimal format of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to combine with contingency management (CM) in a four-week, high school-based smoking cessation program. Thirty-four adolescent smokers received a standard weekly version of CBT or a frequent brief behavioral intervention. Results indicate a trend toward a higher seven-day point prevalence end-of-treatment abstinence rate and percent days abstinent during treatment in the CBT condition. In addition, significantly more participants in the CBT group completed treatment. These preliminary results suggest that when combined with CM, the standard weekly format of CBT is more acceptable to adolescent smokers.

Looking for poppa: parenting status of men versus women seeking drug abuse treatment.

This survey of individuals seeking methadone maintenance treatment was pursued to document the parenting status of drug-dependent men and clarify ways their status as parents differs from that of drug-dependent women. Data concerning demographic characteristics, drug abuse history, and parenting status were systematically coded from the medical records of 362 men and 162 women seeking methadone maintenance treatment during a 12-month period. Analysis of parenting status by gender indicated that, although a greater proportion of women were the parent of at least one biological child, there were actually more fathers than mothers within the cohort. Among the parents, fathers were more likely to have been abusing opioids when they first became a parent, and they were more likely to be living away from their children. There were no significant gender differences in the number of children or the average age of children. The results suggested that fathering may be an important, but largely neglected, treatment issue for drug-abusing men.

Characteristics of tobacco-smoking problem gamblers calling a gambling helpline.

Few studies have examined the smoking behaviors of problem gamblers. A high proportion of problem gamblers calling a gambling helpline reported daily tobacco smoking (43.1%). Problem gamblers reporting daily tobacco smoking more frequently acknowledged depression and suicidality secondary to gambling, gambling-related arrests, alcohol and drug use problems, mental health treatment, and problems with casino slot machine gambling. The findings substantiate the relationship in problem gamblers between tobacco smoking and psychiatric symptomatology, particularly other substance use problems. The high proportion of callers reporting daily tobacco smoking highlights the need for enhanced smoking cessation efforts in problem gamblers.

A placebo controlled trial of bupropion for smoking cessation in schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenic patients have high rates of cigarette smoking compared with the general population. We compared sustained-release (SR) bupropion with placebo for smoking cessation in patients with schizophrenic disorders. We also examined how antipsychotic class predicts smoking cessation outcomes with bupropion. METHODS: Thirty-two subjects meeting DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and nicotine dependence were randomized to bupropion SR (BUP, 300 mg/day) or placebo (PLA). Outcomes included treatment retention, smoking abstinence rates, expired breath carbon monoxide (CO) levels, psychotic symptoms, and medication side effects. RESULTS: Bupropion significantly increased trial endpoint 7-day point prevalence smoking abstinence rates compared with placebo [BUP, 8/16 (50.0%), PLA, 2/16 (12.5%); chi(2) = 5.24, df = 1, p <.05], and reduced CO levels during the trial [Medication x Time interaction; Z = 3.09, p <.01]. Positive schizophrenia symptoms were not altered by BUP, but negative symptoms were significantly reduced. Atypical antipsychotic drug treatment enhanced smoking cessation responses to BUP. Major side effects were dry mouth, gastrointestinal symptoms, headache, and insomnia. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that 1) BUP enhances smoking abstinence rates compared with PLA in nicotine-dependent schizophrenic smokers; 2) BUP is well-tolerated and safe for use in these patients; and 3) atypical antipsychotics may enhance smoking cessation outcomes with BUP.