BACKGROUND: Despite evidence of the burden of dual use of smokeless tobacco (SLT) and cigarettes among people with HIV (PWH), little effort has been made to test SLT cessation interventions among PWH. We assessed the effects of a brief SLT cessation counseling among PWH in Kathmandu, Nepal. METHODS: Participants included 48 PWH with a history of smoking ≥100 cigarettes in their lifetime and currently ≥5 cigarettes/day. Our SLT cessation counseling emphasized the (a) harms of SLT, (b) benefits of quitting, and (c) risks of increasing or initiating SLT while quitting smoking. Participants also attended eleven 3-8-min video-based smoking cessation sessions over three months, which focused on setting a quit date, smoking cessation, and long-term abstinence. We measured SLT use behaviors at baseline and at 3-month post-recruitment. RESULTS: = 0.007). Among SLT users, the frequency of SLT use in the past month and the average daily intensity of SLT in the past month, week, and 24 h decreased substantially from baseline to post-intervention. Five of the twenty-eight PWH who did not use SLT at baseline reported using it at the post-intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Our pilot trial demonstrated promising effects of a brief SLT cessation intervention, highlighting its potential to expand among PWH in Nepal and other resource-limited settings.
Poudel et al. (Wed,) studied this question.