Nicotine replacement therapy can help teens quit or at least cut back on smoking, research suggests.

In a study of teenage smokers who used nicotine patches with or without an antidepressant medication, few teens completely kicked the habit, but most did significantly cut back on cigarettes.

“Almost all kids cut down to a few cigarettes per week or day,” lead author Dr. Joel D. Killen at Stanford University School of Medicine in California told Reuters Health. “This result is important because it suggests that teens can quit, and encourages physicians and other health care providers to help them take that step,” Killen said.

Cigarette smoking among the young remains a serious problem, with about 1 out of 5 high school seniors being daily smokers. Despite the need for ways to help teens quit smoking, few studies have examined smoking cessation treatment in adolescents.

Killen’s team tested the nicotine patch in 211 smokers aged 15 to 18. Participants used the patch for 8 weeks.

In addition to the patch, some smokers were randomly assigned to receive sustained-release bupropion (the active ingredient in Zyban), which has been shown to help some people quit smoking. Other smokers were given a dummy placebo pill.

All smokers also participated in group sessions on how to quit smoking.

After 10 weeks of treatment, 28 percent of smokers who received the nicotine patch and placebo, and 23 percent of those on the patch plus bupropion, had quit smoking, the researchers report in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

This patch-only result is similar to the percentage of adults in a recent study who stopped smoking after using nicotine replacement therapy.

The finding that smokers who took bupropion were not more likely to quit contrasts with a study showing that adding bupropion to the treatment program was helpful to adults trying to quit smoking.

One possible reason for the difference between adults and teens is that the researchers prescribed teens a relatively dose of bupropion, since it has not been tested in children.

In addition, teens often did not take the drug as often as prescribed, which could have diminished its effectiveness.

But about 6 months after the study began, only 7 or 8 percent of smokers in either group were still cigarette-free.

Although it may seem disappointing that so many teens were still smoking, there was a silver lining. Most students had cut back their smoking to no more than a few cigarettes per day, according to the report.

Overall, the findings are encouraging, according to Killen.

“For researchers, the results give us a foundation to build upon and give us hope that we may be able to build more powerful programs to help teens quit and stay off,” Killen said.

SOURCE: Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, August 2004.