Research Project 1
Pharmacotherapies: Efficacy, Mechanisms and Algorithms

This project is also known to the general public as the "Wisconsin Smokers' Health Study" (WSHS). It involves ground-breaking research on smoking and health conducted in Milwaukee and Madison, Wis. A primary goal of the study is to learn more about the most effective treatments for different types of patients so clinicians can better match individual smokers with optimal treatments.

Enrollment is now complete. So far, participants in the WSHS have quit at rates significantly higher than in the past. Among study participants receiving active medication, early results show more than 60 percent have remained tobacco free at the end of treatment. Nearly 80 percent of smokers initially enrolled in the study are continuing to participate for one additional year and longer.

This study compares five pharmacotherapies head-to-head and with placebo. The medications are:

• Nicotine patch.
• Nicotine lozenge.
• Bupropion (Zyban).
• Nicotine patch plus lozenge.
• Bupropion plus lozenge.

Project 1 also includes extensive assessments—including physical, psychological, social, genetic and lifestyle. These include treadmill and ultrasound tests. These tests will help determine how the medications work and how to tailor treatments to individuals. Researchers are collecting an extensive set of assessments on participants, such as genotypes, personality, diet, alcohol use/abuse, social relations, quality of life, exercise, smoking, withdrawal symptoms, stress, nicotine dependence as well as continuous and categorical measures of psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses.

The treadmill test is one of many tests in TTURC 2 designed to look at each participant's overall health.

Assessments will serve four purposes:

1. Measure treatment outcomes.
2. Assess how treatments work.
3. Develop an algorithm to assign the best tobacco treatments to individual smokers.
4. Serve as baseline measures for Project 2 “Long-term Outcomes.”

The researchers hope to break new ground with discoveries that will help healthcare providers treat not just the tobacco use – but the patient as a “whole person” over an extended timeframe.

Research Project 2: Natural History of Smoking and Quitting: Long-term Outcomes

Research Project 3: Pharmacotherapies: Effectiveness in Primary Care Systems

Research Project 4: Healthcare Costs and Utilization of Smoking and Quitting

More Information
Understanding and Preventing Relapse, TTURC 1 (1999-2004)

Tobacco Dependence: Treatment and Outcomes, TTURC 2 (2004-2009)

• Research by the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center
• University of Wisconsin Measures and Scales
• Tobacco and Healthcare Policy Research
• Clinical Trials: New Medication
• Additional UW-CTRI Research
• Links to Other Research Web Sites