UW wins $7M grant to study ways to quit tobacco

Four years ago, Inda Lampkins, a 42-yearold Milwaukee mother diagnosed with nonHodgkin lymphoma, took one of the most difficult and most important steps to improve her health. She quit smoking.

Now, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers who helped her have been awarded a $7 million federal grant to study ways to help more smokers quit and stay off tobacco for good.

Scientists working with the university’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention hope to enroll more than 1,000 smokers in Milwaukee and Madison in the four-year study. All participants will receive three months of coaching and the anti-smoking pill Chantix.

Some participants will also receive an additional three months of Chantix, as well as nicotine patches. Other participants will receive placebo patches and medications.

“These are state-of-the-art medications, the best we have for helping people quit,” said Jim Stein, the study’s principal investigator and a cardiologist at UW.

Although Chantix is donating the pills, Stein stressed that the Pfizer, the drug’s maker, has no other involvement in the study, nor do the scientists have a financial interest in the medication. The $7 million to fund the study comes from branches of the National Institutes of Health.

Studies have shown that the human body can heal rapidly from the effects of smoking. The problem is that the nicotine in cigarettes is one of the most addictive drugs in existence. As a result, many smokers fail in their attempts to quit or are only successful for a matter of months.

Stein said that only about one-third of those who attempt to quit are able to stay off of cigarettes for about three months. By six months, the success rate drops to 20%.

Just 7% are able to reach a year without returning to cigarettes.

That’s why the current study is examining longer-term treatment.

“A lot of patients tell us that when they are on the medications they do great,” Stein said. “Then we pull the plug on them.”

About 765,000 Wisconsin residents smoke, roughly 17% of the state’s population. Across the U.S. smoking rates have been dropping, but two groups continue to have higher percentages: African-Americans and Latinos.

“It was just time,” said Lampkins, who is African-American, recalling her decision to quit.

Within a month or two of stopping, she said, her breathing improved and she found it less taxing to walk up stairs.

As part of the study she joined, Lampkins received calls from a smoke-ending coach before she got up in the morning. The first cigarette of the day was one of the toughest to give up.

“You can do it if you put your mind to it,” she said. “But you’ve got to want it.”