Stop Smoking Vaccine
If you are chain smoker, you will know how addicted your body has become to smoking cigarettes and the craving for nicotine.What if you are trying to control the habit and cut down on smoking, this will help you improve your health as well. There are several products to help you with this although the stop smoking vaccine that stops you smoking because you no longer get a kick from the nicotine is becoming a reality.The Swiss biotechnology company Cytos which develops products to treat nicotine addiction developed the stop smoking vaccine.
How does the stop smoking vaccine work you might wonder.Well the vaccine uses part of a protein that exerts a pull on an immune response to nicotine. To prevent the nicotine from getting through to the brain, the antibodies bind to the nicotine.As there is no kick from the administered nicotine, the craving to smoke reduces making it much easier for chronic smokers to quit the habit.
According to a study conducted by Prof. Dr. Jacques Cornuz of University Hospital Lusanne, 57% of smokers who was administered the stop smoking vaccine developed high levels of antibodies against nicotine. Upon receiving the stop smoking vaccine, they quit the habit for at least six months. It is interesting to see that 31% of the people who was given a mock stop smoking vaccine also stopped smoking.Those who developed lower levels of antibodies also quit smoking that was estimated to be 33%.
However, certain side effects such as redness and sensitivity at the injection site and also some flu-like symptoms which would generally disappear within 24 hours, are associated with the stop smoking vaccine.
Although the addictive smoker has attempted to quit smoking numerous times, the percentage of those who actually manage to quit and become smoke free is still pretty low.Many of them attempt nicotine replacement therapy, counseling and sometimes antidepressants but only one in every 20 smokers succeeds in quitting in the long run.
Certain other companies ,apart from Cytos , such as Xenova Group,Nabi Biopharmaceuticals and Prommune also are working on a vaccine to stop smoking. The vaccine to stop smoking may just be the truly revolutionary product we were looking for that allows the chronic smoker to stop smoking for good and in turn increase the number of individuals who stopped smoking completely.
