Nicotine to fight Covid-19 – study says smokers have reduced risk of catching coronavirus
Can it really be that smoking tobacco, inhaling all that nicotine, reduces the risk of catching Covdi-19? Can smoking tobacco prevent really you from getting this hideous respiratory disease? A French suggests it’s true. Maybe.
A team at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris questioned 480 patients who tested positive for the coronavirus. Of the 350 ill enough to have been to warrant a prolonged stay in hospital – median age: 65 – just 4.4% were regular smokers. For those released home – median age: 44 – 5.3% smoked. But around 25% of French people are smokers. So either those with Covid-19 are liars – you told the insurance company you don’t smoke, right? – or maybe smoking is good for you?
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of March said that only 12.6% of 1,000 patients were smokers, a figure that was significantly lower than expected. Some 28% of people in China are smokers.
French neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux thinks nicotine might stop the virus from reaching cells in the body preventing its spread. Nicotine may also lessen the overreaction of the body’s immune system that has been found in the most severe cases of Covid-19 infection. To test the theory, frontline health workers, and hospital patients with the Covid-19 virus will be slapped with nicotine patches.
“Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that those who smoke every day are much less likely to develop a symptomatic or severe infection with Sars-CoV-2 compared with the general population,” say the Pitié-Salpêtrière researchers. “The effect is significant. It divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for those admitted to hospital. We rarely see this in medicine.”
Meanwhile: emphysema.
Posted: 23rd, April 2020 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
