Stop smoking drug cuts heart attacks

BOSTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers see a connection between a tobacco cessation medication program and fewer hospitalizations for heart attacks and coronary atherosclerosis.

Thomas Land and colleagues at the Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School -- all in Boston -- could not find similar reductions for other diseases. However, they say, improvements in other smoking-related diseases -- such as asthma and other lung diseases -- often take longer than two years.

The study, published in PLoS Medicine, indicates a 46 percent drop in hospital admissions for heart attacks and a 49 percent annual decline in admission for coronary atherosclerosis in the two years following stop-smoking drug therapy.

"For low-income smokers, removing the barriers to the use of smoking cessation pharmacotherapy has the potential to decrease short-term utilization of hospital services," the study authors say in a statement.

The researchers suggest the savings from less hospitalization could outweigh the costs of removing financial barriers to smoking cessation medications. They call for more studies to determine if the Massachusetts results were unique.

The study was based on hospitalization claims data following the 2006 Massachusetts Medicaid program -- MassHealth -- decision to offer tobacco cessation medications free to subscribers. More than 75,000 subscribers used the benefit by 2008 as smoking declined by about 10 percent.