A new study recently published in BMJ highlighted that smokers with mental health disorders are not sufficiently represented in clinical trials regarding smoking cessation.
Data has consistently shown that people suffering from mental illness are more likely to smoke than people who do not, hence it is crucial that they are included in clinical trials related to smoking cessation.
Sadly the opposite seems to be true. Titled, “Inequity in smoking cessation clinical trials testing pharmacotherapies: exclusion of smokers with mental health disorders,” the review aimed to examine the practice of excluding smokers with mental health disorders (MDHs) from such clinical trials and why.
The research team analyzed the Cochrane database of systematic reviews until September 2020 for reviews on smoking cessation using pharmacotherapies. “We included 279 RCTs from 13 Cochrane reviews. Of all studies, 51 (18.3%) explicitly excluded participants with any MHDs, 152 (54.5%) conditionally excluded based on certain MHD criteria and 76 (27.2%) provided insufficient information to ascertain either inclusion or exclusion. Studies of antidepressant medications used for smoking cessation were found to be 3.33 times more likely (95% CI 1.38 to 8.01, p=0.007) to conditionally exclude smokers with MHDs than explicitly exclude compared with studies of nicotine replacement therapy,” reported the researchers.
Diane Caruana – VapingPost – 2022-08-11.
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