Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Most people who stop smoking gain weight. This can discourage some people from making a quit attempt and risks offsetting some, but not all, of the health advantages of quitting. Interventions to prevent weight gain could improve health outcomes, but there is a concern that they may undermine quitting. We updated register searches for the review of nicotine receptor partial agonists.
Screening and data extraction followed standard Cochrane methods. Abstinence from smoking was expressed as a risk ratio RR. Part 1: We include 37 completed studies; 21 are new to this update. We judged five studies to be at low risk of bias, 17 to be at unclear risk and the remainder at high risk. Interventions aimed at increasing acceptance of weight gain reported mixed effects at end of treatment, 6 months and 12 months with confidence intervals including both increases and decreases in weight gain compared with no advice or health education.
Due to high heterogeneity, we did not combine the data. These interventions increased quit rates at 6 months RR 1. The effects of ephedrine and caffeine combined, lorcaserin, and chromium were too imprecise to give useful estimates of treatment effects. No studies of fluoxetine provided data at 12 months. We are not certain which programmes or treatments work best to help people avoid gaining weight in the long term up to 12 months when stopping smoking, or how they affect success in stopping smoking.
This is because the evidence shows varied and unclear effects on weight gain. Further studies should continue to look at how to limit weight gain in people who are stopping smoking. Future studies of new medicines to help people stop smoking should also measure changes in their weight. If you smoke, the best thing you can do for your health is to stop. But people often put on weight when they stop smoking, usually in the first few months of stopping. Gaining weight might undermine some of the benefits of stopping smoking, and might also affect the motivation of some people trying to stop smoking.
Some programmes to help people stop smoking specifically target weight control. Other ways to help people stop smoking might also affect their weight; these include: exercise programmes, taking medicines, and using nicotine replacement therapy NRT. Four of these studies contributed to both. The 37 studies of specific programmes tested behavioural programmes, including dieting, to manage weight in 11, people trying to stop smoking. Of these studies, 39 were done in the USA and the rest took place in other countries around the world.
