Department of Behavioral Science, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.
Department of Family Medicine and BioBehavioral Health, University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth, MN.
Nicotine Tob Res. 2020 Jul 16;22(8):1294-1300. doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntz209.
Smoking to reduce negative affect has been identified as a key motivational feature of tobacco use. Our recent work suggests that smoking very low nicotine content (VLNC) cigarettes reduces the relationship between negative affect and smoking behavior over a 6-week period. Here, we sought to extend our findings by evaluating whether a gradual or immediate approach to switching to VLNC cigarettes led to a differential reduction in the relationship between affect and smoking behavior over a longer (20-week) period.
Participants (n = 1250) were adult smokers from 10 US sites randomized to one of three groups: gradual nicotine reduction (15.5, 11.7, 5.2, 2.4, and 0.4 mg of nicotine per gram of tobacco [mg/g]), immediate nicotine reduction (0.4 mg/g), or standard nicotine content cigarettes (15.5 mg/g; control), for 20 weeks. We examined whether the relationship between affect-both negative and positive-and cigarettes per day differed as a function of reduction group.
We found that both negative and positive affect were associated with cigarette consumption in the control group, but not in the gradual or immediate reduction groups across the 20 weeks of exposure.
Our results extend previous findings that switching to VLNC cigarettes disrupts the relationship between affect and cigarette consumption by showing that either gradually or immediately reducing cigarette nicotine content achieves this disruption. These findings provide further evidence that switching to VLNC cigarettes reduces nicotine-related reinforcement of cigarette smoking.
These findings support the notion that switching to very low nicotine content cigarettes reduces the association between affect and smoking behavior, and that either a gradual or immediate nicotine reduction approach achieves this reduction. This provides further evidence that switching to very low nicotine content cigarettes weakens reinforcement mechanisms associated with nicotine dependence.
减轻负面情绪而吸烟已被确定为烟草使用的关键动机特征。我们最近的研究表明，在 6 周的时间内，吸食极低尼古丁含量（VLNC）香烟会降低负面情绪与吸烟行为之间的关系。在这里，我们试图通过评估逐渐或立即转向 VLNC 香烟是否会导致在更长（20 周）时间内对影响和吸烟行为之间的关系产生不同程度的降低，来扩展我们的发现。
参与者（n=1250）是来自美国 10 个地点的成年吸烟者，他们被随机分配到以下三个组之一：逐渐降低尼古丁（15.5、11.7、5.2、2.4 和 0.4 毫克尼古丁/克烟草[mg/g]）、立即降低尼古丁（0.4 mg/g）或标准尼古丁含量香烟（15.5 mg/g；对照组），为期 20 周。我们研究了影响和每日吸烟量之间的关系是否因减少组而异。
我们发现，在对照组中，负面和积极情绪都与吸烟量有关，但在逐渐或立即减少组中，在暴露的 20 周内均未观察到这种关系。
我们的结果扩展了先前的发现，即转向 VLNC 香烟会破坏影响和香烟消费之间的关系，表明逐渐或立即降低香烟中的尼古丁含量都可以实现这种破坏。这些发现进一步证明，转向 VLNC 香烟会降低与吸烟行为相关的尼古丁强化作用。
这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即转向极低尼古丁含量的香烟会降低情绪与吸烟行为之间的关联，而逐渐或立即减少尼古丁的方法都可以实现这种降低。这进一步证明，转向极低尼古丁含量的香烟会削弱与尼古丁依赖相关的强化机制。
