HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, April 27, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Smoking is said by some to be the hardest addiction to break, and certain people might benefit from brain stimulation to quit, French researchers suggest.
Smokers who received noninvasive brain stimulation — using low-intensity electric or magnetic impulses — were twice as likely to go without cigarettes over three to six months as those who received sham brain stimulation, according to a new study review from researchers at the University Hospital of Dijon. Their work pooled data from seven previously published studies that included nearly 700 patients.
“This paper recognizes that the basis where the addiction of tobacco dependence comes from is the most primitive parts of the brain,” said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a volunteer medical spokesman for the American Lung Association, and director of the Tobacco Treatment Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. He wasn’t involved in the study.
Noninvasive brain stimulation has generated a lot of interest lately, with studies looking at it to treat a range of issues from pain and depression to substance abuse and tobacco dependence. But little is known about the duration of benefits for smokers after they quit, lead researcher Dr. Benjamin Petit and colleagues noted in the April 25 issue of Addiction.
While acknowledging this study was “modest” in size, Petit said, “the results appear to be robust and we feel confident in suggesting that noninvasive brain stimulation is a technique of interest for both short-term and sustained smoking cessation.”
Several other studies are underway, Petit said. “In the near future, noninvasive brain stimulation might be recognized as a promising new option for assisting individuals who wish to stop smoking,” he said in a journal news release.
Currently,