CTRU’s collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine the TXT2STOP smoking cessation trial has culminated in a publication in The Lancet this month (Free et al, www.thelancet.com, published online June 30, 2011 DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60701-0)

Dr Robyn Whittaker, Health Technology Programme Leader at CTRU and a co-author on the Lancet paper says “TXT2STOP is a text messaging smoking cessation intervention adapted from CTRU’s STOMP programme especially for the United Kingdom. For this study, the text messages were delivered from CTRU, via our scheduling software and an online gateway, to 5,800 participants across the UK. Dr Caroline Free (principal investigator) and her team in London managed the study using CTRU’s web-based data collection and management system.”

The study confirmed and improved on the results of previous studies by demonstrating a doubling of quit rates over a control group at six months (verified continuous abstinence of 10.7% v.4.9%, RR 2.20 95%CI 1.80-2.68, p<0.0001).

A commentary on the study in the same journal comments on the strengths of the trial including the large sample size, duration of follow-up, verified outcomes, and personalised messages. A cost-effectiveness analysis is being carried out and will be reported separately. However on the basis of these findings, the authors conclude that “txt2stop intervention should be considered as an addition to existing smoking cessation services”.

N.B. In New Zealand STOMP is available as a free national service (called txt2quit) run by The Quit Group (go to www.quit.org.nz or phone 0800 778 778).