THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 26, 1996 TAG: 9603260334
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Hard-core smokers are about to get new help in kicking the habit: a nasal spray that gives them a shot of nicotine from a bottle instead of a cigarette.
Nicotrol NS is a pump bottle that holds 100 milligrams of pure nicotine that smokers can inhale to ward off cigarette cravings. It is to be sold by prescription only to adult smokers trying to quit, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday.
But the FDA warned that smokers could become as dependent on the nasal spray's nicotine as they are on cigarettes. Scientists discovered one desperate woman who plotted ways to get the nasal spray for a year when she ran out of a three-month supply received during a research study.
Smokers should try to use the spray for just three months - and never longer than six months, the FDA said.
Despite the risk, Nicotrol NS ``will be a very big help to smokers in general, but specifically to the heavier smokers,'' said Dr. Richard Hurt, director of the nicotine dependency center at Mayo Clinic.
McNeil Consumer Products of Fort Washington, Pa., will begin selling the spray later this year.
The nicotine nasal spray, developed by Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., hits the bloodstream faster than gum or a nicotine patch, offering the potential of almost immediate relief of cigarette cravings.
A squirt up each nostril gives the smoker 1 milligram of nicotine. Smokers aren't supposed to inhale it more than five times a day. Overdosing is dangerous - 40 milligrams of nicotine at once can be lethal.
A milligram dose may seem large, particularly when low-nicotine cigarettes advertise that smokers' blood absorbs a tenth that amount.
But smokers' brains absorb less nicotine from the spray than from cigarettes, Hurt said. The lungs send cigarette smoke-borne nicotine straight to the heart, where it is pumped to the brain in five heartbeats. Nicotrol NS is absorbed through the lining of the nose, where it goes into the bloodstream and circulates through the body before reaching the heart and then the brain, Hurt explained.
KEYWORDS: FDA NICOTINE SPRAY APPROVAL by CNB