A course of pills likely to cost less than £2 a week can help people to quit smoking as effectively as any other medication and at a tiny fraction of the price, a study has shown.
Researchers said that using cytisine can triple a smoker’s chances of giving up. More significantly, it could become the first treatment that costs less than a packet of cigarettes.
The study, funded by the Medical Research Council and led by scientists at University College London, involved 740 patients who took cytisine or a placebo for four weeks. No other health counselling was offered.
Those on cytisine were 3.4 times more likely to succeed than those on the placebo. After a year, 8.4 per cent of participants had quit smoking,