Risk Of Smoking Relapse Research Articles

건강믿음모형을 이용한 금연성공자의 재흡연에 영향을 미치는 요인 분석: 금연클리닉 등록자를 중심으로

이 연구는 보건소 금연클리닉에 등록하여 6개월 금연에 성공한 사람들의 장기적인 금연 지속 여부와 재흡연에 영향을 미치는 요인을 파악하기 위하여 실시되었다. 2008년 1월부터 2009년 2월까지 C시 보건소 금연클리닉에 등록하여 6개월 금연에 성공한 920명 중 조사에 응한 남성 159명을 최종 분석 대상으로 하였다. 연구 자료는 금연클리닉 등록카드와 2010년 9월 20일부터 10월 20일까지 실시된 우편설문을 통해 수집되었다. 연구에 포함된 변수는 응답자들의 흡연상태, 인구사회학적 특성, 금연클리닉 등록 당시의 흡연관련 특성, 금연클리닉을 통하여 제공받은 서비스, 건강행태, 건강믿음모형의 구성 변수 등이었다. 연구의 결과는 다음과 같다. 6개월 금연성공자 중 지속적 금연성공자는 57.2%, 중간 흡연자는 17.0%, 재흡연자는 25.8%였다. 재흡연자들의 재흡연 이유는 스트레스가 쌓여서 76.2%, 본인의 의지가 약해서 16.7%, 주위의 유혹에 의해서 7.1%로 나타났다. 응답자의 인구사회학적 특성, 과거의 흡연관련 특성, 제공받은 금연상담서비스, 건강행태 요인 등은 6개월 금연 성공자의 1년 후 재흡연 여부에 유의한 영향을 미치지 못하였으며, 건강믿음모형의 구성요소 중 (1) 흡연으로 인한 질병의 발생 가능성, (2) 흡연으로 야기되는 질환의 심각성, (3) 금연의 건강증진에 대한 도움, (4) 금연으로 인한 스트레스와 사회생활에 대한 장애정도, (5) 자기효능감이 단변량분석에서 재흡연 여부에 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 서열 로짓 분석을 시행한 결과 이 중 (4) 금연으로 인한 스트레스와 사회생활에 대한 장애정도, (5) 자기효능감만이 재흡연 여부에 유의한 영향을 미쳤으며, 특히 자기효능감이 매우 중요한 영향을 미치는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 이 연구를 통해 보건소 금연클리닉을 통하여 6개월 금연에 성공한 남성들 중 상당수가 재흡연을 하게 된다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 재흡연자들은 다시 담배를 피우게 된 이유를 스트레스의 증가나 자신의 의지부족 때문이라고 하였으며, 재흡연에 영향을 미치는 요인이 금연자의 인구사회학적 변수나, 과거의 금연습관보다는 심리학적 요인, 특히 자기효능감과 금연과 관련된 인지된 장애임도 밝혀졌다. 이러한 연구결과는 금연클리닉 등록자 중 재흡연 위험이 높은 사람을 선별하여 맞춤식 관리를 하는데 도움을 줄 것으로 기대되며, 금연 클리닉 등록자를 위한 스트레스 해소나 자기효능감 강화 프로그램 개발이 시급함을 시사한다. 이 연구는 일개 중소도시의 금연클리닉 등록자 중 남성만을 대상으로 하였고, 우편조사로 인한 낮은 응답률, 조사 시기에 따른 회상 오차, 금단 증상, 행동계기(cue to action), 금연에 대한 사회적 지지와 같은 변수가 누락되는 등 연구방법론 상에 제한이 있어 연구결과의 일반화에 주의를 요하며, 향후 연구에서는 이러한 문제점을 보완할 필요가 있다. Objectives: This study aimed to identify factors associated with smoking relapse. Methods: The study sample was recruited among subjects who were enrolled in the smoking cessation clinic of a public health center and had succeeded in quitting smoking for at least six months. A total of 159 male subjects were followed via mail survey one year later. The independent variables in the analyses were socio-demographic characteristics, smoking history and behavior, receipt of smoking cessation aids, health behaviors and components of the health belief model (HBM). The dependent variable was smoking relapse assessed one year after quitting. Ordered logit regressions were used to identify factors associated with smoking relapse. Results: The relapse rate of the ex-smokers in our sample was 25.8%, and the occasional smoking rate was 17.0%. Univariate analyses revealed that only factors related to the HBM, such as perceived susceptibility to diseases (p<0.01), perceived severity of diseases (p<0.01), perceived health benefits of not smoking (p<0.01), perceived barriers to quitting smoking due to increasing stress and difficulty in social life (p<0.01), and self-efficacy (p<0.01) were associated with the likelihood of relapse for ex-smokers. Ordered logit analyses yielded two significant factors affecting the likelihood of relapse, the perceived barriers to quitting smoking and self-efficacy. Conclusions: Our results indicate that higher levels of barriers to quitting smoking and lower levels of self-efficacy were significantly related to risk of smoking relapse. These findings may be useful for identifying those at highest risk for relapse and choosing the optimal strategies for prevention of relapse for ex-smokers.

Overnight deprivation from smoking disrupts amygdala responses to fear

Cigarette smoking, a major, yet avoidable, cause of disability and premature death, is the most prevalent form of nicotine addiction. An emerging theme in the neurobiology of nicotine addiction is the integrity of the amygdala. Using functional MRI, amygdala responses during a face perception task were compared between 28 chronic smokers [14 females, 14 males; age, 26.3 (2.8) years; age at onset of smoking, 15.8 (2.6) years; years smoked, 9.1 (2.1); cigarettes per day, 17.1 (3.7); Fagerström test for nicotine dependence score, 4.1 (1.9); exhaled carbon-monoxide level, 17.8 (9.5) ppm] and 28 age- and education-matched nonsmokers [14 females, 14 males; age, 26.9 (2.4) years]. Subjects underwent imaging on two separate occasions 1 week apart: smoking satiety versus overnight smoking deprivation, in a randomized counterbalanced order. Our results show no difference in amygdala responses to faces between nonsmokers and satiated smokers. However, overnight deprivation from smoking was associated with a significantly lowered amygdala response to fear, an effect that was probabilistically mapped to the basolateral amygdala. We suggest that aberrant amygdala reactivity in overnight-deprived smokers may reflect a pre-existing vulnerability to smoking and/or increase the risk of smoking relapse after a cessation attempt.

Effects of anhedonia on days to relapse among smokers with a history of depression: A brief report

Despite the strong co-occurrence between lifetime prevalence of depression and smoking, a history of major depressive disorder (MDD history) does not reliably predict smoking cessation outcomes. However, depression is a heterogeneous syndrome comprising several dimensions (e.g., anhedonia, vegetative symptoms, negative affect), and each symptom expression may differentially influence cessation failure. Measuring proximal depressive dimensions may provide a more reliable way of identifying MDD history smokers most at risk for smoking relapse. Anhedonia, in particular, is a core feature of depression that may increase risk for smoking relapse among MDD history smokers. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the relation between anhedonia and relapse latency among MDD history smokers following a brief smoking cessation workshop. Participants (N = 45, 48.9% female), who were euthymic regular smokers with a history of MDD, were randomized to 1 of 3 treatment groups that all involved participation in a daylong group workshop. Workshops were followed by 48 hr of bioverified abstinence and weekly follow-up visits for 1 month. Cox proportional hazard modeling was used to evaluate the effect of anhedonia on relapse latency 30 days following quitting smoking. Results showed that higher levels of anhedonia predicted reduced relapse latencies, both with and without prequit depressive symptom severity included in the model. Results suggest that anhedonia may constitute a proximal risk factor identifying depressive history smokers more likely to relapse to smoking.

Current Combat-Related Mental Health Issues

Copyright © 2010 The Author(s) T he Scioli, Otis, and Keane article, “Psychological Problems Associated With Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom Deployment,” presents a timely overview of mental health risks associated with deployment and combat exposure related to military service in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Health practitioners who are not directly involved in providing services for veterans, military members, or their families will benefit from this article’s basic information about the most common psychological disorders (combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance abuse), as well as assessment methods, effective treatments, and available resources for practitioners. The scientific basis for information about the mental health consequences of deployment and combat exposure has improved greatly with the emergence of current studies featuring longitudinal designs with random selection of active-duty participants. This allows for predeployment, postdeployment, and follow-up assessments to be made on randomly selected service members representing all branches of the activeduty military, National Guard, and reserves. A large study of this type, the Millennium Cohort Study (www. millenniumcohort.org), is particularly important for this journal’s focus on lifestyle factors in health because it shows how key health risk behaviors (eg, alcohol and tobacco use) are adversely affected by deployment and combat exposure. For example, another study from the Millennium Cohort data archive produced a key finding showing that risk for smoking relapse was significantly higher among service members who were deployed (39%) than for those members who did not deploy (28%). Another Millennium Cohort–based study found that service members with a history of physical or sexual assault prior to deployment were at twice the risk for developing warzones. Of particular importance is the need for studies examining effects of multiple deployments. AJLM

Does smoking cue‐induced craving tell us anything important about nicotine dependence?

Cue-reactivity, or self-reported craving response to drug-associated stimuli, is an active area of research on factors that maintain drug use, particularly cigarette smoking. A common rationale for this research is the expectation that treatments that extinguish cue-induced craving will be effective as smoking cessation interventions. Therefore, the importance of research on the variables that moderate and control cue-induced craving would seem to hinge upon the relevance of cue-induced craving to nicotine dependence, particularly its association with relapse risk. However, the limited relevant clinical research has not demonstrated clearly a link between smoking relapse risk and self-reported craving in response to smoking cues. Links between relapse and other responses to cues, such as heart rate or electrodermal activity, are inconsistent or not significant. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved smoking cessation medications have not been shown to alleviate cue-induced craving, although they do alleviate abstinence-induced craving, which has been associated with relapse risk. Nevertheless, other acute measures assessed in the laboratory have been shown to predict subsequent relapse risk in quitting smokers, demonstrating the feasibility of this type of study. Future research may benefit from using more reliable and valid multi-item craving measures, focusing upon more specific conditions under which cue-induced craving may predict relapse and, most importantly, considering dependent measures other than self-reported craving in response to cues, particularly actual smoking behavior. Without stronger evidence in support of the relevance of cue-induced craving response to the persistence of smoking behavior or other measures of dependence, it will be incumbent upon researchers in this area to justify why studies of cue-induced craving contribute to our understanding of dependence.

Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenocortical responses to psychological stress and risk for smoking relapse

Stress is a commonly reported precipitant of relapse to substance use. There is a growing recognition of the need to understand psychobiological alterations in the stress response among chronic drug users, and to determine how they may precipitate relapse. This paper focuses on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) response to stress among dependent smokers. Nicotine acutely activates the HPA axis, and increased HPA activity has been linked to attenuated CNS nicotinic receptor sensitivity. We will review a series of studies demonstrating that steep decline in cortisol concentrations during early abstinence and hyporesponsiveness to stress predict shorter time to relapse. Our studies show that hormonal associations with smoking relapse tend to be more consistent in men, while intensity of withdrawal symptoms tend to be consistent predictors of smoking relapse in women. We propose that perturbed HPA activity during early smoking abstinence exacerbate withdrawal symptoms and may contribute to the rapid relapse observed in the majority of smokers. Our results also reinforce the need for gender-specific investigation of mechanistic and interventional strategies to combat nicotine addiction.

Work factors as predictors of smoking relapse in nurses’ aides

The prevalence of tobacco smoking in nurses' aides (assistant nurses) is high. Many smokers make attempts to stop smoking, but a large portion of these relapse after some period of time. The objective of this study was to identify work factors that predict smoking relapse in nurses' aides. Of 1,373 Norwegian nurses' aides--who were former smokers, not current smokers, and not on leave when they completed a questionnaire in 1999--1,203 (87.6%) filled in a second questionnaire 15 months later. A wide spectrum of physical, psychological, social, and organisational work factors were assessed by validated questionnaires at baseline. Respondents who reported smoking at least one cigarette per day at the follow-up were considered having resumed daily smoking (relapse). Social climate in the work unit (index with 3 items: supportive, trustful, relaxed) and frequency of exposure to threats and violence were the only work factors that were associated with the occurrence of relapse after adjustments for background factors. In a logistic regression analysis, frequent exposure to threats and violence at work (odds ratio (OR)=2.08; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01-4.29), and the lowest quintile of the social climate index (OR=2.12; CI: 1.03-4.36) were associated with increased risk of smoking relapse, after adjustments for age, gender, marital status, and having preschool children. A poor social climate in the work unit and frequent exposure to threats and violence at work may be predictors of smoking relapse in nurses' aides. It is essential that leaders in the health services put more emphasis on creating a supportive, relaxed, and trustful social climate in the work unit. It is also important that protective measures against violent patients are implemented, and that occupational health officers offer victims of violence appropriate support or therapy.

Attenuated adrenocorticotropic responses to psychological stress are associated with early smoking relapse

Research has demonstrated that psychosocial stressors increase smoking and risk for smoking relapse. Alterations in biological systems involved in the stress response caused by chronic smoking may contribute to early relapse. We examined the extent to which pituitary-adrenocortical and cardiovascular responses to stress following the first 24 h of a quit attempt predict early relapse. Seventy-two smokers interested in cessation attended a laboratory stress session 24 h after the beginning of their cessation attempt. Adrenocorticotropin (ACTH), plasma and salivary cortisol concentrations, systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), and heart rate (HR) responses to acute psychological stressors (public speaking and cognitive challenges) were used to predict relapse over a 4-week follow-up period. Those who relapsed within 4 weeks showed attenuated hormonal and cardiovascular responses to stress and exaggerated withdrawal symptoms. Cox proportional hazards survival analysis showed that attenuated ACTH, plasma cortisol, systolic and diastolic BP, positive affect, and exaggerated withdrawal symptoms and smoking urges during acute stress predicted early relapse. Stepwise model showed that ACTH, diastolic BP, and exaggerated withdrawal symptoms remain as significant predictors. When baseline smoking and psychological measures were included in the model, changes in ACTH, diastolic BP, and both factors of smoking urges remained significant predictors of relapse. These results demonstrate that altered stress response predicts increased vulnerability for smoking relapse.

Smoking relapse after 2 years of abstinence: findings from the VA Normative Aging Study.

Little is known about the risk of cigarette smoking relapse after 2 or more years of abstinence. The rates and predictors of late smoking relapse were estimated in 483 men who participated in a prospective study for up to 35 years. Subjects are participants in the VA Normative Aging Study, a prospective observational study of aging in men that began in 1963. Subjects are evaluated approximately every 3 years with physical examinations and questionnaires. Smoking, alcohol use, caffeine consumption, and socioeconomic variables were obtained by questionnaire, and weight and height were measured at clinical examinations every 3 years since 1963. Predictors of smoking relapse were identified using proportional hazards regression models. The rate of smoking relapse in the 2nd-6th years of abstinence fluctuated between 2 and 4% per year, and fell to less than 1% only after 10 years of abstinence. In multivariate regression models, coffee and alcohol consumption, and use of cigars or pipes significantly increased the risk of smoking relapse. A small risk of smoking relapse remains for at least 10 years after smoking cessation. Use of other tobacco products, coffee and alcohol increased the risk of late relapse. These findings may be useful in identifying those at highest risk for late relapse and for motivating former smokers to continue long-term abstinence.

Quitting cigarette smoking produces minimal loss of chronic tolerance to nicotine.

Long-term exposure to nicotine is associated with chronic tolerance to its acute effects, adaptation that may lead to tobacco dependence. The time course for loss of this tolerance after cessation of exposure is not known in humans but could relate to risk of smoking relapse. We examined changes in responses to nicotine as a function of days, weeks, or years of smoking cessation in formerly dependent smokers to determine at what point sensitivity to nicotine is reinstated (i.e., loss of tolerance). Acute subjective, cardiovascular, performance, and reinforcing (self-administration) effects of nicotine nasal spray (0-20 microg/kg) were assessed prospectively in men and women smokers before and then day-by-day (study 1) or 3 weeks (study 2) after stopping smoking. A smoking resumption period (study 1) and a group of non-quitting smokers (study 2) were included to control for the passage of time. These effects were also compared cross-sectionally between those who had quit for 1-4 years and those who had for 6-19 years in a separate sample of long-time ex-smokers to determine whether lengthier abstinence causes greater loss of tolerance (study 3). No clear loss of tolerance was observed on any measure in studies 1 or 2, suggesting that chronic tolerance is fully maintained for at least weeks after quitting smoking. Sensitivity to nicotine's effects was also not different as a function of years quit in study 3. Chronic tolerance to nicotine is not lost within several weeks of quitting smoking and may not change even after years of abstinence from tobacco use.

Smoking cessation in the workplace: Evaluation of relapse factors

Relapse factors associated with a well-supported worksite smoking cessation program were examined in a prospective study. Of 104 employee-participants, 81 (78%) were confirmed as abstinent at 8 days after quit day. Forty-six employees (44%) continued to report total abstinence at 1 year. Stepwise regression analysis of baseline variables found two significant, but weak, predictors of 1-year smoking status: Fagerstrom score and number of other smokers residing in the home. Analysis of tobacco withdrawal symptom data of confirmed abstainers found only self-reported anxiety scores to be predictive of smoking status at 1 year. Early abstainers with elevated anxiety scores appear to be at high risk for smoking relapse.