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Clinical Study of Avmacol® for Detoxification of Tobacco Carcinogens in Heavy Smokers

Trial Summary

This open-label, randomized, cross-over study, evaluates whether two different doses of Avmacol® (4 tablets per day for 10-14 days; 8 tablets per day for 10-14 days) increase the detoxification of tobacco carcinogens in otherwise healthy, current heavy smokers.


Randomized trial with two arms:

  • ARM I: High-Low arm (8 tablets of Avmacol® per day for 2 weeks followed by 4 tablets of Avmacol® per day for 2 weeks).
  • ARM II: Low-High arm (4 tablets of Avmacol® per day for 2 weeks followed by 8 tablets of Avmacol® per day for 2 weeks).

Target Randomizable Enrollment: 60

Statistical Analysis:

For changes in the urinary excretion of SFN as well as the mercapturic acids of tobacco carcinogens, concentrations were normalized to creatinine then log-transformed due to high right skew. The changes following low- and higher-dose BSSE were determined independently. The ratio of the geometric means between post and pre concentrations and the associated 95% CI were derived from log-normal regression. Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated to evaluate the correlation between effective SFN dose, as measured by urinary SFN metabolites, and carcinogen detoxification. Changes in buccal expression of gene transcripts associated with effective SFN dose were computed using the Pearson correlation between log2(fold change in expression) and log2(fold change in creatinine-normalized SFN metabolite concentration) for each participant. Functional enrichment was evaluated by using ClusterProfiler to perform overrepresentation analysis on the top thirty genes most positively or negatively correlated with effective SFN dose. The background universe was set to only the 770 genes probed in the customized NanoString panel. Linear mixed effects models were fit to determine whether there was a dose-response relationship between effective SFN dose, carcinogen detoxification, and the change in NRF2 target gene transcripts. To explore whether the GSTM1 and GSTT1 genotypes were associated with detoxification, two-sided, two-sample t tests were performed. Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple comparisons. McNemar's test was performed to compare the frequency of each specific AE between low and higher-dose treatment. The SAS 9.4 software package was used for all statistical analyses.

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