Therefore, this cutpoint may differ for other samples. While selleckchem this study provides preliminary evidence of the accuracy of pill count for assessing smoking cessation pharmacotherapy adherence, findings should be replicated in a larger and more diverse sample. Additionally, the association between varenicline adherence self-report, pill count, and plasma varenicline concentrations and smoking abstinence should be examined in a larger clinical trial. This study compared pill count, self-report, and plasma varenicline concentrations at Day 12��the earliest timepoint that participants were titrated to the full dose and varenicline steady state was reached. Over the duration of a clinical trial or in practice settings, we anticipate that assessing adherence at earlier timepoints will be particularly important as this is predictive of later smoking abstinence (Fish et al.

, 2009; Leischow, Ranger-Moore, Muramoto, & Matthews, 2004; Nollen et al., 2011; Toll et al., 2007). To conclude, in addition to evaluation of the effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for smoking cessation, researchers should assess the extent to which participants utilize the smoking cessations agents as prescribed. Of three commonly used noninvasive adherence measures, pill count was the most accurate for identifying adherence in this sample of African American smokers. Pill count has been widely used across other health domains and could be reasonably incorporated into research and/or clinical practice as a way to identify and target non-adherence early in treatment, thereby maximizing smoking cessation pharmacotherapy use and improving abstinence rates.

Supplementary Material Supplementary Material can be found online at http://www.ntr.oxfordjournals.org Funding This work was funded by the University of Kansas Cancer Center and Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals. Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals provided study medication but played no role in the design, conduct of the study, or interpretation and analysis of the data. Development and performance of the varenicline plasma analyses were supported in part by grant P30 DA012393 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. J.S.A. is supported in part by 1P60MD003422 from the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. Declaration of Interests J.S.A. and N.L.B. serve as paid consultants to Pfizer Inc.

which markets varenicline. N.L.B. also is a paid consultant for other pharmaceutical companies that are developing or market smoking cessation medications and has served as a paid expert witness in litigation against tobacco companies. Supplementary Material Supplementary Data: Click here to view. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Swope Health Central, the Dacomitinib recruitment site for the study, as well as the volunteers who participated in this research.