The Polish smoking cessation drug that sells like hot cakes in Spain
Tobacco is one of the biggest public health problems worldwide. Often willpower alone is not enough, so here is a drug produced in Poland and financed by the Spanish government which, thanks to its active plant ingredient, reduces the desire to smoke
How to quit smoking? To break the addiction, in Spain, many smokers are resorting to a drug called Todacitan, produced by the Polish laboratory Aflofarm, which has been financed by the Iberian health system since February.
A 25-day cycle, the estimated time to see results, cost 198 euros but with the intervention of the Spanish Ministry of Health, its price has dropped to 116 euros.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT
Todacitan is a nicotine-based treatment, the active ingredient of which is cytisine, a drug extracted from a plant that has been used for decades as a substitute for nicotine in tobacco.
As the experts point out, no treatment is miraculous but "cytisine is a well-known active ingredient, with a good safety profile and efficacy similar to varenicline," Esteve Fernández, head of the tobacco control unit, explained to El Pais at the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and professor of public health at the University of Barcelona (UB).
WHAT IS CYTISINE
Discovered in 1818 and first isolated in 1865, cytisine was consumed as a cheap tobacco substitute by Russian and German soldiers during World War II. Subsequently, in 1964, it was marketed for the first time in Bulgaria under the name Tabex.
“About 50 years ago, when no smoking cessation aid was approved in Western Europe, cytisine was already being used for this purpose in Central and Eastern Europe,” reads an article published in the British Medical Journal .
HOW CYTISINE WORKS
Cytisine is very similar to nicotine in that they are both molecules of plant origin and bind to the same receptor in the brain. It reduces the desire to smoke and even if you smoke, you hardly experience any of the sensations associated with it.
The goal is to temporarily reduce the nagging feeling of withdrawal while breaking the nicotine addiction.
BECAUSE SPANISH PUBLIC HEALTH FUNDS IT
The reason why Spain, the only country that finances the laboratory that produces it, is that the other two similar treatments already financed by the public health system have been off the market for many months.
These are Champix, marketed by Pfizer and whose active ingredient is varenicline, and Zyntabac, based on bupropion, by GlaxoSmithKline (Gsk).
Both are no longer found because nitrosamines were present in their composition, a compound considered carcinogenic and which sometimes occurs as a by-product of the chemical synthesis processes of drugs.
THE NUMBERS OF THE COMPANY THAT PRODUCES TODACITAN
Aflofarm is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Poland which has been operating in the healthcare sector for thirty years. It has marketed over 115 product brands, employs more than 1,000 people and exports to 30 countries.
He has been marketing Todacitan for more than a year.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/il-farmaco-polacco-per-smettere-di-fumare-che-va-a-ruba-in-spagna/ on Mon, 20 Mar 2023 14:17:09 +0000.