Project DEDUCE: Digital Envirotyping to Develop Understanding of Cigarette Smoking and the Environment

Part of paid clinical trials in Durham, North Carolina.

Sponsor
Duke University
Study ID
NCT07089901
Phase
PHASE4
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • Smoking

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
21 Years - N/A
Healthy Volunteers
Not accepted

Interventions

  • transdermal nicotine replacement therapy — DRUG
    All participants will receive transdermal nicotine replacement therapy (21 mg. patches)

Study Details

Tobacco use is a chronic relapsing condition. That is, even with state-of-the-art treatment, \>70% of smoking cessation attempts end in a return to regular smoking. Research demonstrates that everyday environments associated with smoking trigger craving for cigarettes, provoke smoking, and lead to relapse. However, despite this knowledge, understanding of environmental correlates of smoking has been limited by a reliance on self-report, leading to imprecise information about the physical environments in which people live. To overcome this challenge, the research team has pioneered the development of digital envirotyping, which uses digital tools (e.g., sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence) to efficiently and accurately characterize and categorize environments with the goal of identifying environmental markers of behavior and health. Foundational to the digital envirotyping research is computer vision (CV), a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computer systems to recognize objects and scenes in digital images, mimicking how humans perceive and understand visual information. With CV researchers can extract detailed and accurate information (i.e., objects and location types) about the everyday environments of people who smoke (PWS) and relate that information to smoking behavior. After validating the use of CV, the researchers used CV to develop enviromarkers of relapse risk. Importantly, they identified a novel enviromarker in which people at greater risk for relapse when they quit are exposed to a more consistent level of environment-related smoking risk as they move between their smoking and nonsmoking environments. Research is now needed to advance digital envirotyping and enviromarker development in the field of tobacco addiction. The study will recruit a diverse, national sample of n=500 adults who are interested in quitting smoking. For two weeks prior to quitting, they will undergo photoEMA in which they will take two pictures of their current environment when they smoke, and randomly 10 times per day resulting in \>300,000 images total. Cessation will be supported by nicotine replacement therapy (i.e., nicotine patch). The primary clinical outcome will be days to relapse. Specific aims are to (1) further develop, refine, and validate methods for efficient digital envirotyping at scale, (2) leverage CV and AI approaches to develop enviromarkers of smoking relapse, and (3) conduct analyses to increase understanding of environmental smoking risk in women and individuals with low socioeconomic status.

Key Dates

Start date
May 6, 2026
Status verified
May 2026
Primary completion
Mar 31, 2030
Completion
Mar 31, 2030

Study Design

Enrollment
600 participants (estimated)
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
OTHER

Arms

  • Experimental: study group
    All participants will receive transdermal nicotine replacement therapy.

Primary Outcome Measure

Average number of days to smoking relapse [ Time Frame: From quit date to 6-month follow-up (about 6.5 months) ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
Duke University Medical CenterDurhamNorth Carolina27706
Laura E Van Althuis, MHA
9196684312

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By research site
Duke University Medical Center· Durham, NC

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