Pharmacotherapy Smoking Cessation Trials: Exploring the Relationship Between Adverse Events, Compliance, Dropout and Abstinence

Joel Dubin
Associate Professor
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science and
Department of Health Studies and Gerontology
University of Waterloo

March 14, 2007
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Davis Centre 1304, University of Waterloo

View Video of Presentation in HI Alive Archive: Research Seminars Archive 2006-2007

Abstract
In trials of pharmacological aids to smoking cessation, the participants who comply (both not dropping out and adhering to their prescribed medication regimen) tend to exhibit higher rates of abstinence. Here we apply specialized survival graphical methods to reveal this trend, and subsequently implement complex survival modeling to identify predictors of abstinence success/failure, including consideration of medication dosage strength,  the experiencing and severity of adverse events, and treatment compliance. We apply the methods to a dose-ranging clinical trial of naltrexone, an opioid antagonist, combined with nicotine patch, where the study population was comprised of 385 current smokers  who desired to become abstinent.

About the Speaker
Joel Dubin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science, and the Department of Health Studies & Gerontology. His research focuses upon development and utilization of longitudinal and survival analysis methods applied to problems in biomedicine  and population health. Specific application areas include aging, smoking cessation, nephrology, and the study of adverse events in clinical trials.