Conditions: Nicotine Dependence
Keywords: Tobacco nicotine smoking varenicline human laboratory study stress tolerance startle response cognitive assessment progressive ratio
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 7
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to test the ways that a drug called varenicline helps smokers to quit smoking. Varenicline is also called Chantix® and is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help people quit smoking. We will test how varenicline works by having you quit smoking and complete tasks that assess how you think and feel. We predict that varenicline help reduce anxiety, improve attention and concentration, and reduce how satisfying cigarettes are.

Detailed description:
The purpose of this study is to understand the therapeutic mechanisms of varenicline, a novel nicotinic analogue, through focused measures of potential psychological and physiological mediators. Varenicline is an FDA-approved pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation that is believed to provide relief from craving and withdrawal through agonism and antagonism of some central nervous system nicotinic acetylcholinergic receptors. However, no controlled studies have established the physiological and psychological processes that mediate the efficacy of varenicline in humans. The main goal of the proposed pilot study is to evaluate and compare the effects of varenicline on subjective, cognitive, and physiological outcomes, using a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind between-groups design. The study will combine both brief clinical trial methodology with human laboratory approaches. A secondary goal is to validate the utility of the laboratory paradigms for the identification of future smoking cessation agents.

Arms:
arm 1: Placebo Varenicline arm 2: Varenicline

Interventions: intervention 1: Placebo intervention 2: Varenicline
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Days 1 - 3 (0.5 mg tablet, q.d.), Days 4 - 7 (0.5 mg tablet, b.i.d.), and Day 8 - 21 (1 mg tablet, b.i.d.). intervention 2: Days 1 - 3 (0.5 mg tablet, q.d.), Days 4 - 7 (0.5 mg tablet, b.i.d.), and Day 8 - 21 (1 mg tablet, b.i.d.).

Protocol document: