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CENTURY
Yale University
School of Medicine
SAC-203
Connecticut
Mental Health Center
34 Park Street
New Haven, CT 06519

Phone:
203-974-7591

Fax:
203-974-7606

E-mail:
infocentury@yale.edu

News

Yale News Release

Parkinson's Drug may help people quit smoking

New Haven, Conn. -- A new study from Yale has shown that a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease, selegiline hydrochloride (Deprenyl®), may help smokers quit.

The study, published in the January 15, 2003 edition of Biological Psychiatry , was conducted by Dr. Tony George, an assistant professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, as part of work being done through the Center for Nicotine and Tobacco Use Research and the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (CENTURY/TTURC). The smokers in the study were all people with histories of multiple quit attempt failures.

"We specifically selected difficult-to-treat smokers, because this is the group that hasn't responded to conventional treatments," said George "While there are several effective treatments for smoking cessation including nicotine replacement therapies and bupropion (Zyban), there are many smokers who do not respond to these drugs, so developing new drugs for smoking cessation is an important undertaking. Selegiline appears to be a drug that might have promise for treatment of nicotine addiction."

One of the major themes of CENTURY/TTURC is finding solutions for smokers who find it particularly hard to quit.

"Dr. George's study is an important contribution to our understanding of the subgroups of people who are not responsive to current treatments," said Dr. Stephanie O'Malley, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and CENTURY/TTURC's principal investigator.

George's goal was to evaluate the monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) inhibitor, selegiline hydrochloride (Deprenyl), compared to placebo for the treatment of nicotine dependence in smokers. Inhibition of MAO-B in the brain leads to increases in brain dopamine. Selegiline is used to treat Parkinson's disease, a neurological disorder associated with dopamine deficiency. A component of cigarette smoke (not nicotine) is known to inhibit brain monoamine oxidase activity in smokers, which was one of the reasons George undertook the study.

The results from George's pilot study are extremely promising. Smoking abstinence rates were significantly higher in selegiline group compared to placebo [Selegiline, 9/20 (45.0 %); Placebo, 3/20 (15.0 %), Odds Ratio = 4.64, , p<0.05]. Interestingly, smokers with clinically significant depressive symptoms at study entry had poorer smoking cessation outcomes compared to those who did not have significant depression.

"This is yet another example of how having co morbid psychiatric symptoms contributes to poorer smoking cessation outcomes," Dr. George said. Dr. George runs the Program for Research in Smokers with Mental Illness (PRISM), which focuses on understanding how smoking is linked to psychiatric disorders. This is also a major focus of the CENTURY group.

Dr. George's study was one of three initial pilot studies for the CENTURY/TTURC group.

"This study would not have been done if not for the TTURC and TTURC funding," said Dr. George.

The Yale TTURC, which is part of CENTURY, receives funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Other investigators on the study included Jennifer C. Vessicchio, M.S.W., Research Associate; Angelo Termine, B.S., Research Associate; Peter I. Jatlow, M.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Psychiatry; Thomas R. Kosten, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry; and Stephanie S. O'Malley, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry.

For more information about this study, please see the abstract and related news coverage.