ArticleTobacco prevention & cessation2025
Use of low-dose varenicline in patients who do not tolerate standard-dose varenicline: A longitudinal case series.
Article in Tobacco prevention & cessation, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionAlthough varenicline tartrate is the most effective monotherapy for smoking cessation, the standard-dose (1 mg twice daily) is associated with adverse events: gastrointestinal, sleep-related, and mood-related. Lower doses have demonstrated similar efficacy with lower adverse event incidence. The purpose of this study was to determine whether patients who previously discontinued standard-dose varenicline due to adverse events could tolerate and benefit from low-dose varenicline.
methodsWe conducted a prospective longitudinal pilot study of 22 adult daily smokers in Durham NC, USA, in 2022. All participants previously discontinued standard-dose varenicline due to adverse events. These patients were prescribed either 0.5 mg twice daily for varenicline-related nausea or 1 mg in the morning for sleep problems. The primary outcome was change in self-reported adverse event severity (scale: 0-7). Secondary outcomes were smoking abstinence at 6-week follow-up and tolerance of the lower dose.
resultsPatients with intolerable nausea reported significant severity reduction (6.00 to 0.00; p<0.001) as did patients with intolerable vivid dreams (3.27 to 0.27; p=0.001). Smoking abstinence rates were 28.6% for 0.5 mg twice daily and 26.7% for 1 mg once daily. Low-dose varenicline tolerance was 81.8%.
conclusionsPatients who experience significant nausea with standard-dose varenicline may successfully make transition to a 0.5 mg low dose twice daily and those who experience vivid dreams to 1 mg varenicline in the morning. Treatment efficacy rates remained relatively high. This suggests a need for a future randomized controlled trial to establish low-dose varenicline as an approach for patients who do not tolerate the standard-dose varenicline.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.