Group Therapy Program Helps HIV+ People Quit Smoking in Bronx
Positively Smoke Free (PSF), a smoke-ending program designed for people with HIV, doubled the rate at which people quit smoking in a randomized trial in the Bronx, New York. But the quitting rate did not reach 20%.
Half of HIV-positive people in the United States smoke cigarettes, and smoking causes or contributes to numerous diseases that afflict people with HIV. This study randomized 145 HIV-positive people to standard care or to PSF, an 8-session program “tailored to address the needs and concerns of HIV-infected smokers.” All study participants received a 3-month supply of nicotine replacement therapy. The primary endpoint was biochemically confirmed, 7-day point-prevalence abstinence 3 months after the program began.
An intention-to-treat analysis showed a 19.2% quitting rate in people enrolled in PSF, compared with a 9.7% rate in the control group, a difference that did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.11). However, in an as-treated analysis enrollment in PSF more than tripled the odds of giving up cigarettes (odds ratio 3.55, 95% confidence interval 1.04 to 12.0).
Latinos and people with lower loneliness scores were more likely to quit smoking. People in the PSF program smoked significantly fewer cigarettes than people in the control group and had significant increases in motivation to quit and belief in their ability to quit. Attending 7 or 8 sessions was associated with a higher quitting rate.
The researchers observe that loneliness and self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability to do something) “are influential factors in the smoking behaviors of people living with HIV.”
Source: Alyson B. Moadel, Steven L. Bernstein, Robin J. Mermelstein, Julia H. Arnsten, Eileen H. Dolce, Jonathan Shuter. A randomized controlled trial of a tailored group smoking cessation intervention for HIV-infected smokers. JAIDS. 2012; 61: 208-215.
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Written by Mark Mascolini on behalf of the International AIDS Society