This Wednesday, researchers from University of Nebraska Medical Center announced at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that Nabi Pharmaceuticals’ anti-tobacco vaccine NicVax helped some study volunteers to quit or lessen their smoking, but overall success remained small.

The study was conducted on more than 300 hundred long term smokers volunteers. Almost 16 percent of the vaccinated group with 400 mg dose of NicVax treatment quit smoking for 12 months, compared to 6 percent in the placebo group. There was also a group vaccinated with lower dosage, 200 mg shot of NicVax.

In this group 14 percent of volunteers stopped smoking for a year. The other patients that didn’t quit smoking showed also a high biological response to the vaccine cutting down their daily smoking from a median of 20 cigarettes to 10 cigarettes.

The vaccine is designed to stimulate the body to produce chemicals called antibodies that prevent nicotine from getting to the brain and because of that the smoker doesn’t benefit from the nicotine’s pleasurable effects. Patients that produced more anti-nicotine antibodies were more able to lessen their smoking or the period of abstinence was longer in their case. This finding draws attention to the fact that the results of this vaccine might be dependent of its dosage, the higher the better.

Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center stated: "I believe data from this trial are very encouraging for smokers who are trying to quit as well as for the field of smoking cessation vaccines."