NIH Offers A Grant Of $12 Million To Devise Personalized Quit Smoking Treatment
Date: 21th September 2010
According to a latest disclosure, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are gearing up to undertake an experiment with the purpose of studying the correlation between smokers` genetics and the level of success attained by them in facilitating smoking cessation. Sources make it apparent that Dr. Caryn Lerman, a psychiatry professor at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine and his team of researchers would kick-start the study and also that they have received a five-year grant amount of $12 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find out how the genetic variation of smokers affect their ability to get rid of nicotine addiction.
For the study, around 1,350 adult smokers would be recruited and thereafter their nicotine metabolite ratio (NMR) would be evaluated to find out whether these smokers rapidly facilitate metabolism of nicotine or perform this function in a slow manner. In the next phase of the study, the participants are to be divided into two groups—smokers whose metabolism is normal and those who have a slow metabolism process. After dividing the smokers into groups, they would be randomly treated with the anti-smoking medicine Chantix, nicotine patch and placebo. In this experiment, the researchers would also extra DNA from the smokers in order to recognize gene variations that are likely to influence the treatment of nicotine addiction.
Sources reveal that this double-blind placebo-controlled study would be finished off in the next four years and moreover it is known that this study is co-led at the University of Toronto by Rachel Tyndale
However, news sources also reveal that the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Human Genome Research Institute and National Institute of General Medical Sciences have extended their support to the $12 million grant by NIH.
Source: http://www.upenn.edu |
