‘Quit Day’ Text Messages Help Smokers Kick Habit, Research Shows
Smokers who received text messages encouraging them to kick the habit were more than twice as likely to succeed as those who didn’t get the messages, according to a trial published today by The Lancet.
About 11 percent of smokers in the U.K. study who received text messages supporting their efforts to quit, helping them to deal with cravings or giving them advice about keeping off weight didn’t resume smoking six months later. That compared with about 5 percent of those who received “placebo” messages thanking them for taking part in the study, reminding them about appointments or that had nothing to do with smoking.
Those who reported they were no longer lighting up after six months sent researchers a saliva sample that was tested for the presence of a nicotine byproduct that determines if a person has or hasn’t been smoking. The study is the first to use such tests to verify quitting rates, said lead author Caroline Free, a family doctor and clinical lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London.
“We thought that texting worked in the short term, but obviously what matters in smoking is the long term and that is what this trial set out to do,” Free said in a telephone interview.
About 3 percent of smokers who seek to quit with no support or medication succeed after one year, Free said. Existing smoking-cessation programs, such as counseling or medication, double a person’s chances of kicking the habit, she said.
‘Quit Day’
The smokers in the study received five text messages a day for the first five weeks and then three a week for the next 26 weeks. Motivational messages included: "This is it! QUIT DAY," "Carbon monoxide has now left your body," and "Cravings last less than 5 minutes on average."
Twenty-eight percent of people who told the researchers they had stopped smoking didn’t pass the biochemical test, meaning they hadn’t actually dropped their habit as they had claimed, Free said. They were classified as smokers when researchers analyzed their data. The test is about 90 percent reliable, Free said.
In an accompanying editorial, two researchers at the University of Oxford said that mobile-phone text messaging systems may help reduce smoking in low- and middle-income countries where tobacco consumption is expected to peak in the coming decades. The technology is inexpensive and increasingly available there, wrote Derrick A. Bennett and Jonathan R. Emberson of Oxford.
The U.K. trial enrolled 5,800 people age 16 to 79 who were seeking to quit smoking and owned a mobile phone.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Gerlin in London at agerlin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net
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