ArticleDrug and alcohol review2023
Publicly subsidised smoking cessation medicines in times of COVID-19 in Australia: An interrupted time series analysis.
Article in Drug and alcohol review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- Observational
- Publicly subsidised smoking cessation medicines in times of COVID-19 in Australia: An interrupted time series analysis.Drug and alcohol review · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionIn Australia, the available published literature demonstrated a spike in dispensed prescription medicines after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that subsequently returned to expected levels. Smoking cessation medicines may not follow this pattern because quit attempts are influenced by a range of factors. Knowledge of whether dispensing of these medicines has changed since the pandemic is lacking. We explored the change in dispensing of publicly subsidised smoking cessation medicines since the pandemic.
methodsAustralia's universal health-care system provides access to government-subsidised medicines via the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and records of dispensed medicines are publicly available on a nationally aggregated level. We retrieved Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data from January 2016 to January 2021. We used interrupted time series modelling to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on dispensing of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) patches, varenicline and all smoking cessation treatments combined separately.
resultsAfter an initial spike in medicines at the onset of the pandemic, the monthly rate of prescriptions dispensed for varenicline was predominantly within predicted ranges, while that of NRT patches was predominantly below predicted ranges. DISCUSSION AND
conclusionsThere has been a differential change in the number of subsidised smoking cessation medicines supplied in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic, with varenicline prescriptions largely within, and NRT patches largely lower than, expected ranges. The reasons for the apparent change in dispensing of subsidised smoking cessation medicines are unclear.
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