Promoting smoking cessation among community-living female smokers by training smoking cessation and reduction ambassadors.

BACKGROUND: Females are less willing than males to seek help from smoking cessation services; the present study examined how the use of these services by females could be enhanced by training young female ambassadors to deliver a brief intervention. METHODS: We collaborated with the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association. Fifty of the association's Girl Guides served as smoking cessation and reduction ambassadors to deliver a brief intervention to at least two female smokers. The effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated by a one-group pre-test and repeated post-test design. We undertook data collection at baseline and at 1, 3 and 6 months. RESULTS: In all, 106 female smokers received the brief intervention. At 6-month follow-up, the self-reported abstinence was 12.2%; the biochemically verified prevalence of quitting was 5.7%. Approximately 7% of participants were motivated to use smoking cessation services between baseline and 6 months. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the effectiveness of a brief intervention in promoting smoking cessation for community-living female smokers in Hong Kong. However, the intervention could be enhanced by further promoting the use of smoking cessation services to female smokers.

Smoking behaviours of Hong Kong Chinese hospitalised patients and predictors of smoking abstinence after discharge: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: Patients admitted to hospitals represent an excellent teachable moment for smoking cessation, as they are required to abstain from tobacco use during hospitalisation. Nevertheless, smoking behaviours of hospitalised patients, and factors that lead to smoking abstinence thereafter, remain relatively underexplored, particularly in a Hong Kong Chinese context. This study aimed to examine the smoking behaviours of hospitalised patients and explore factors leading to their abstaining from cigarette use after being hospitalised. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design was employed. SETTING: This study was conducted in three outpatient clinics in different regions in Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 382 recruited Chinese patients. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The patients were asked to complete a structured questionnaire that assessed their smoking behaviours before, during and after hospitalisation. RESULTS: The results indicated 23.6% of smokers smoked secretly during their hospital stay, and about 76.1% of smokers resumed smoking after discharge. Multivariate logistic regression analysis found that number of days of hospitalisation admission in the preceding year (OR 1.02; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.27; p=0.036), patients' perceived correlation between smoking and their illness (OR 1.08; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.17; p=0.032), withdrawal symptoms experienced during hospitalisation (OR 0.75; 95% CI 0.58 to 0.97; p=0.027) and smoking cessation support from healthcare professionals (OR 1.18; 95% CI 1.07 to 1.36; p=0.014) were significant predictors of smoking abstinence after discharge. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study will aid development of appropriate and innovative smoking cessation interventions that can help patients achieve more successful smoking abstinence and less relapse. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02866760.

Rapid, photoactivatable turn-on fluorescent probes based on an intramolecular photoclick reaction.

Photoactivatable fluorescent probes are invaluable tools for the study of biological processes with high resolution in space and time. Numerous strategies have been developed in generating photoactivatable fluorescent probes, most of which rely on the photo-"uncaging" and photoisomerization reactions. To broaden photoactivation modalities, here we report a new strategy in which the fluorophore is generated in situ through an intramolecular tetrazole-alkene cycloaddition reaction ("photoclick chemistry"). By conjugating a specific microtubule-binding taxoid core to the tetrazole/alkene prefluorophores, robust photoactivatable fluorescent probes were obtained with fast photoactivation (∼1 min) and high fluorescence turn-on ratio (up to 112-fold) in acetonitrile/PBS (1:1). Highly efficient photoactivation of the taxoid-tetrazoles inside the mammalian cells was also observed under a confocal fluorescence microscope when the treated cells were exposed to either a metal halide lamp light passing through a 300/395 filter or a 405 nm laser beam. Furthermore, a spatially controlled fluorescent labeling of microtubules in live CHO cells was demonstrated with a long-wavelength photoactivatable taxoid-tetrazole probe. Because of its modular design and tunability of the photoactivation efficiency and photophysical properties, this intramolecular photoclick reaction based approach should provide a versatile platform for designing photoactivatable fluorescent probes for various biological processes.

Discovery of new photoactivatable diaryltetrazoles for photoclick chemistry via 'scaffold hopping'.

We report the discovery of two long-wavelength (365 nm) photoactivatable diaryltetrazoles through screening a small library of diaryltetrazoles that were designed using a 'scaffold hopping' strategy. A naphthalene-derived tetrazole showed excellent reactivity in the photoinduced cycloaddition reaction with methyl methacrylate under 365 nm photoirradiation in acetonitrile PBS buffer mixture. Besides, the brightly fluorescent pyrazoline cycloadducts that were formed further increase the potential utility of these new diaryltetrazoles as 'photoclick' reagents and as reporters in biological studies.