If you are a heavy smoker, you are probably aware of the body's addiction to smoking cigarettes and nicotine cravings.What if you are trying to control the habit and cut down on smoking, this will help you improve your health as well. Various products claim to offer an easy way to stop smoking and the stop smoking vaccine can help you quit the habit when you no longer get a boost from nicotine.The Swiss biotechnology company Cytos which develops products to treat nicotine addiction developed the stop smoking vaccine.

You might wonder how the stop smoking vaccine work.Well the vaccine employs part of a protein that trigger an immune response to the chemical nicotine.To prevent the nicotine from getting through to the brain, the antibodies bind to the nicotine.As there is no kick from the administered nicotine, the craving to smoke reduces making it much easier for chronic smokers to quit the habit.

In the study conducted by Prof. Dr. Jacques Cornuz of University Hospital Lausanne, revealed that 57% of smokers who received the stop smoking vaccine achieved high levels of antibodies against nicotine. After the smokers received the stop smoking vaccine, they stopped smoking completely for at least six months. A fascinating fact is that 31% of those people who received a dummy stop smoking vaccine also happened to quit smoking.Those who developed lower levels of antibodies also quit smoking that was estimated to be 33%.

However, certain side effects such as redness and sensitivity at the injection site and also some flu-like symptoms which would generally disappear within 24 hours, are associated with the stop smoking vaccine.

The actual percentage of those who truly manage to stop smoking is very low although many chronic smokers try desperately to quit the habit.Many of them attempt nicotine replacement therapy, counseling and sometimes antidepressants but only one in every 20 smokers succeeds in quitting in the long run.

There are a number of other companies that are also looking into the development of a vaccine for smoking aside from Cytos and they are the Xenova Group, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals and Prommune. The vaccine to stop smoking may just become a truly revolutionary treatment that will help the addictive smoker quit for good and increase the number of those who have stopped smoking once and for all.