TUESDAY, May 20, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A new study by British researchers suggests that e-cigarettes can help people stop smoking.

The study found that people who wanted to quit smoking were about 60 percent more likely to succeed if they used e-cigarettes compared to would-be quitters who tried an anti-smoking nicotine patch or gum.

"It appears, at least for some people, e-cigarettes are a viable method of quitting that looks comparable to, if not better than, traditional nicotine replacement therapy," said Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, who had no part in the study.

The same 60 percent statistic held when the study authors compared the use of e-cigarettes as a quit-smoking aid to people who tried to quit using willpower alone.

Smoking is a notoriously tough habit to beat, however, and quit rates were still low: Only one-fifth of people who tried e-cigarettes as a stop-smoking aid succeeded in quitting long-term, the study found.

The study is published May 21 in the journal Addiction.

The vapor provided by electronic cigarettes contains nicotine but not tobacco smoke, thereby reducing cravings and withdrawal symptoms in smokers, according to background information in the report. And use of e-cigarettes has risen significantly in recent years: Only 2 percent of U.S. smokers reported using them in 2010, but that number jumped to over 30 percent in 2012, the researchers said.

Results of other studies on e-cigarettes' potential as a smoking-cessation aid have been mixed, however.

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in March found that electronic cigarettes do not help people curb or quit smoking.

"When used by a broad sample of smokers under 'real world' conditions, e-cigarette use did not significantly increase the chances of successfully quitting cigarette smoking," concluded that study's lead researcher, Dr. Pamela Ling, an associate professor at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California, San Francisco.

However, Siegel said the new study is different because the researchers didn't just look at people who used e-cigarettes, but at those who used them specifically to quit.