Stop Smoking Vaccine

If you are chain smoker, you will know how addicted your body has become to smoking cigarettes and the craving for nicotine.What if you are trying to control the habit and cut down on smoking, this will help you improve your health as well. Various products claim to offer an easy way to stop smoking and the stop smoking vaccine can help you quit the habit when you no longer get a boost from nicotine.The Swiss biotechnology company Cytos which develops products to treat nicotine addiction developed the stop smoking vaccine.

How does the stop smoking vaccine work you might wonder.Well the vaccine uses part of a protein that exerts a pull on an immune response to nicotine. Therefore, the formed antibodies stick to the nicotine molecules to stop them from reaching the brain.As there is no kick from the administered nicotine, the craving to smoke reduces making it much easier for chronic smokers to quit the habit.

According to a study conducted by Prof. Dr. Jacques Cornuz of University Hospital Lusanne, 57% of smokers who was administered the stop smoking vaccine developed high levels of antibodies against nicotine. After the smokers received the stop smoking vaccine, they stopped smoking completely for at least six months. It is interesting to see that 31% of the people who was given a mock stop smoking vaccine also stopped smoking.Those who developed lower levels of antibodies also quit smoking that was estimated to be 33%.

However, certain side effects such as redness and sensitivity at the injection site and also some flu-like symptoms which would generally disappear within 24 hours, are associated with the stop smoking vaccine.

The actual percentage of those who truly manage to stop smoking is very low although many chronic smokers try desperately to quit the habit.Although most of them seek nicotine replacement therapy,counseling and even antidepressants, only one in every 20 smokers ever succeeds in getting rid of the habit completely.

Certain other companies ,apart from Cytos , such as Xenova Group,Nabi Biopharmaceuticals and Prommune also are working on a vaccine to stop smoking. The vaccine to stop smoking may just be the truly revolutionary product we were looking for that allows the chronic smoker to stop smoking for good and in turn increase the number of individuals who stopped smoking completely.