NICE is consulting on a proposal to add cytisine as a treatment option to its stop smoking guidelines.

This proposal follows a review of recent evidence which suggests patients who received cytisine were 30% more likely to not smoke for six months or longer, when compared to placebo or no medication.

The drug was made available in the UK in January this year, after being approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2019.

NICE has said that cytisine has a ‘comparable effect’ as a smoking cessation treatment to varenicline, a pill which was last week relaunched on the NHS.

Cytisine, also known as cytisinicline, was not licensed for use in the UK when NICE’s guideline on tobacco was first developed in 2021, but it has now been proposed as an ‘additional stop smoking option’ following evidence of its effectiveness.

NICE said: ‘The change in the availability of cytisine in the UK means that it should be considered alongside other interventions for smoking cessation.

‘Given the evidence provided in the Cochrane review and more recently published trials, it is apparent that cytisine should be listed in the medicinally licensed product recommendations as an option for people who smoke.’

There is also evidence that there are fewer adverse events reported with cytisine than those reported for varenicline, according to NICE.

A consultation on this proposal will run until the end of November and the final update to NICE’s guideline is expected in early February next year.

When announcing the rollout of the relaunched generic version of varenicline earlier this week, NHS England flagged that other smoking cessation drugs such as cytisine are ‘on the near horizon’.

A Cochrane review last year found that cytisine and varenicline were among the most effective tools for helping people stop smoking, but noted that there were not widely available.

A version of this article was first published by our sister title Pulse