'Quitlines' help smokers kick the habit

NEWCASTLE, Australia, June 13 (UPI) -- Telephone counseling -- so-called quitlines -- helps smokers quit cigarettes no matter how they are recruited, researchers in Australia say.

Flora Tzelepis of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales in Australia and colleagues analyzed 24 previous studies of proactive telephone counseling to see whether the method of recruitment made a difference in the number of people who quit smoking.

Active recruitment methods include physician referral, direct mail or phone calls, while passive methods include posters or television ads, Tzelepis says.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found proactive counseling helped boost long-term smoking cessation regardless of how the smokers were recruited. Quitlines had a statistically significantly positive effect on prolonged and continuous abstinence after six to nine months and after 12 to 18 months.

"In general, our findings have strengthened the support for proactive telephone counseling for smoking cessation," the study authors say in a statement.