An unlikely new substance is being trialled as a possible help to quitting smoking - a simple glucose tablet. Professor Robert West of St George's Hospital Medical School, London, and Dr Peter Hajeck at St Bartholomew's and the Royal London Medical School, are currently looking for 1,000 smokers who want to give up to take part in a clinical study.
Half the volunteers will have a six-week supply of lemon-flavoured dummy pills to pop into their mouth whenever nicotine craving strikes, the rest, unknown to them, will be using 2 gram glucose tablets identical in taste and appearance. 'We'll be asking participants to chew a tablet whenever they feel the urge to smoke, and to have one every hour in any case, to keep up blood glucose levels,' says Professor West.
An earlier pilot study from West's team, in the department of psychology, showed that glucose could be at least as effective as nicotine replacement for helping smokers stop, which he puts at around a 6% chance of remaining completely cigarette-free for a year. This measure of success is a very stringent one, and more rigorous than normal criteria applied to stop-smoking techniques. 'We're not expecting a massive effect, but glucose could prove a useful alternative for those who can't use nicotine replacement, pregnant women for example, people who don't want to use NRT, or in circumstances where cost or availability put it out of reach, as in developing countries.' West believes that glucose helps quell nicotine craving by affecting levels of the brain's feel-good chemical, serotonin. 'We now know that long term use of nicotine causes depletion of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that's related to our appetite for carbohydrates,' he says. 'By satisfying the appetite for carbohydrates, which glucose does very quickly, raising blood sugar levels in a matter of minutes, you're kidding the body into thinking it's satisfying the need for nicotine.' Volunteers, who will have urine samples checked first to make sure they aren't diabetic, are expected to munch their way through around 14 glucose tablets a day.
But is there any danger of piling on the pounds as a result? West thinks not. Indeed, oddly enough, weight loss might even be a welcome side effect of taking glucose.
'The calorific value of this number of tablets is in fact very small, equivalent to around one slice of white bread,' he says, 'and, in fact, glucose tends to make people want to eat less because it is highly satiating. In an earlier study of mine, using glucose tablets with overweight women, many lost weight because they simply didn't feel like eating so much.' West is cautiously optimistic about ability of glucose to help ease the distress causing by smoking smoking, but wary of raising hopes too soon.
'Smokers are so used to people promising miracle cures which don't work that I'm very wary of raising expectations until we have some hard evidence to back it up.
'But we think glucose probably does work, and it could make enough of a difference to be important and helpful. We could be talking about saving hundreds of thousands of lives.'
Anyone who is interested in participating in the trial can call 0181-725 5602 to leave a contact name and number.
Quit countdown
Stop smoking, and after:
20 minutes: your blood pressure and pulse rate return to normal
8 hours: your blood oxygen levels return to normal
24 hours: your lungs start to clear
48 hours: no nicotine left in your body, your sense of taste and smell greatly improve
72 hours: your bronchial tubes relax
2-12 weeks: your circulation improves
3-9 months: your lung function will be up by 10 per cent
5 years: your risk of a heart attack falls by 50%
10 years: your risk of lung cancer falls by half, and the risk of heart attack will be the same as if you never smoked.
Quitline: 0800 002200
