A Chinese study team created a revolutionary tea filter in order to help smokers eradicate their addiction to nicotine and found out the molecular mechanism that affects the odds of giving up smoking.

The study team from Chinese Science Academy Institute of Biophysics conducted by Dr. Zhao Bao realized a laboratory research and found out that thiamine (glutamic acid) the active substance in tea restricts addiction to tobacco. The research named “The smoking cessation and detoxification effect of tea filters on smokers” can be found in the recent publication of China Journal of Science.

Cigarette consumption is associated with many dangerous health aftereffects, among which are malignant tumors, cardiovascular illnesses and chronic pulmonary diseases.

At present pharmaceutical companies provide many methods for overcoming nicotine addiction. In spite of all realized efforts, smoking cessation therapies that are available in present provide limited data of smokers who succeed in giving up smoking using these therapies, in comparison to the number of those who returned to smoke after some time. As nicotine is a very additive substance, giving up smoking is a rather difficult process. Thus, there is an essential need for creating new more efficient therapies in smoking cessation that do not possess harmful influence.

Tests on smokers who used lately-created tea filter were held in the Beijing Military General Hospital Department on Addiction and Drug Abuse. More than one hundred of long-time chain-smokers participated in that study. The first level results showed that the average number of cigs smoked per day among the participants reduced by nearly 43 % and 55 % when using tea filters during four weeks and eight weeks accordingly. The second level results showed that the average number of fags smoked per day among the participants reduced by around 45 %, 84 % and 90 % when using tea filters during four weeks, eight weeks and twelve weeks accordingly.

The average number of cigs smoked per day by the smokers who participated at the study reduced from nearly 24.5 daily down to approximately 3 cigs a day after 3-month test. Besides, the most participants mentioned that saliva and their conditions connected to smoking were lowered in comparison to control group. The clinical researches of those smokers, who were using tea filters, did not show any evident depressing effects. The mechanism of experimental test found out that thiamine contained in the tea filter had inhibiting effect almost similar to the nicotine acetylcholine receptor anticatalyst.

The toxicological tests showed that the tea filters can effectively reduce the cancer-causing substances such as tar, toxins, nitrosamines, chrysene and other chemicals that are contained in tobacco smoke.