US doctors trialling 'vaccine' for smokers
AMERICAN doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit - an injection that "immunises" them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction.
Around 300 people around the country are testing an experimental vaccine that makes the immune system attack nicotine in much the same way it would fight a life-threatening germ.
The treatment keeps nicotine from reaching the brain, making smoking less pleasurable and theoretically, easier to give up.
The small amount that still manages to get in helps to ease withdrawal, the main reason most quitters relapse. If it works - and this has not yet been proved - the vaccine could become part of a new generation of smoking cessation treatments.
Participants will get four or five shots, either four or six weeks apart, and will be studied for a year.
