A double blind randomized controlled trial investigating efficacy and safety of varenicline for smoking cessation in patients with type 2 diabetes: study protocol.

Reducing exposure to cigarette smoke is an imperative for public health and for diabetic patients. Patients with diabetes who continue to smoke face challenges at quitting and the delivery of effective smoking cessation interventions is a major unmet need. The high-affinity α4ß2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor partial agonist varenicline in combination with counseling is effective for smoking cessation, but evidence in patients with diabetes is limited. A clinical trial of varenicline targeted specifically at smokers with T2DM is warranted. This randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trial will be the first study to test efficacy and safety of varenicline in smokers with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) over the course of 52 weeks. We hypothesize that varenicline treatment (1 mg BID, administered for 12 weeks) would increase quit rates, maintain smoking abstinence up to 1 year after treatment, and be well-tolerated in T2DM smokers intending to quit. Efficacy end points will include carbon monoxide-confirmed continuous abstinence rate (CAR) and 7-day point prevalence of abstinence. The results of this RCT will help inform medical/health authorities and physicians worldwide whether an optimally varenicline-treated cohort of T2DM patients who smoke will experience significant success rates, without significant side effects.Trial registration NCT01387425 ( https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01387425 ).

Resonant metasurfaces at oblique incidence: interplay of order and disorder.

Understanding the impact of order and disorder is of fundamental importance to perceive and to appreciate the functionality of modern photonic metasurfaces. Metasurfaces with disordered and amorphous inner arrangements promise to mitigate problems that arise for their counterparts with strictly periodic lattices of elementary unit cells such as, e.g., spatial dispersion, and allows the use of fabrication techniques that are suitable for large scale and cheap fabrication of metasurfaces. In this study, we analytically, numerically and experimentally investigate metasurfaces with different lattice arrangements and uncover the influence of lattice disorder on their electromagnetic properties. The considered metasurfaces are composed of metal-dielectric-metal elements that sustain both electric and magnetic resonances. Emphasis is placed on understanding the effect of the transition of the lattice symmetry from a periodic to an amorphous state and on studying oblique illumination. For this scenario, we develop a powerful analytical model that yields, for the first time, an adequate description of the scattering properties of amorphous metasurfaces, paving the way for their integration into future applications.