Tanie leczenie "ze wschodniego bloku"... :)

http://www.theheart.org/article/1287145.do Cheap, "Eastern Bloc" treatment may offer new hope for smoking cessation. Boston, MA - Cytisine (Tabex, Sopharma AD) may be an effective and ultimately inexpensive aid in smoking cessation, new research suggests [1]. A randomized controlled trial of more than 700 smokers from Poland shows that, although quit rates were low overall, significantly more of the participants receiving cytisine maintained smoking abstinence at six months and one year compared with those receiving placebo. Cytisine is currently not available in the US, although the subtype of nicotinic receptor it binds with is the primary target for the smoking-cessation treatment varenicline (Chantix, Pfizer), report the investigators. Dr Robert West Varenicline has repeatedly made headlines over concerns that despite its proven efficacy as a stop-smoking aid for people with cardiovascular disease, it is also associated with a small increased risk of cardiovascular adverse events in this patient population. Varenicline is also pricey, costing $90 to $120 per month in the US, and, according to the study authors, not much less in countries like China and India, where cigarettes themselves cost just pennies. "There are still regulatory hoops to go through, but I hope that before long this drug will be available throughout the world at a cost that every smoker can afford," lead author Dr Robert West (University College London, UK) said in an interview. "It should be cheaper to take this drug than to smoke, wherever you are in the world. It is not a magic cure by any means; stopping is still extremely difficult for many people. But it could save many hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions, which is quite a thought." According to the researchers, 95% of all quit-smoking attempts without aid fail by six months. Their study is published in the September 29, 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Unusual history Cytisine is a partial agonist that binds with high affinity to the 42 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, controlling nicotine dependence. The drug has been available as a smoking-cessation treatment under the Tabex name to "former socialist-economy countries" for more than 40 years, the investigators note. Although Tabex was withdrawn from some of these countries after they joined the European Union, it is still available in Poland for the equivalent of about $15 for a treatment course and for about $6 in Russia. "I have long been concerned that effective treatments to help smokers to stop are not affordable by the majority of smokers in the world. Many smokers can stop unaided, but many cannot, and literally millions of lives are lost wor