https://m.jpost.com/health-science/...s-a-potential-therapeutic-for-covid-19-630576
Israeli study points to nicotine as a potential therapeutic for COVID-19
"The risk of infection by COVID-19 appears to be reduced by half among current smokers," researchers have found.
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Of the more than three million adults included in the study, 114,545 had been tested for the virus, of whom just 4% tested positive. The researchers matched those who tested positive to those testing negative at a ratio of 1:4, taking into account as closely as possible variables such as age, sex and ethnicity. They found that among those who had tested positive, 9.8% were smokers against 19% of the overall population.
A previous smoking habit also appeared to confer some benefit, as 11.7% of those tested positive were former smokers against 13.9% in the general research population. Therefore, those who had previously smoked had a 19% lower risk of catching the virus, the results suggested.
These results appeared to hold even when previously existing conditions were taken into account – and of those who did test positive, there was no evidence that smoking worsened the symptoms of the disease.
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The findings reflect comparable results in a recent study carried out by Prof. Zahir Amoura from Pitié Salpétrière Hospital in Paris, who found that, of 482 COVID-19 patients that presented to the hospital between February 28 and April 9, just 4.4% of in-patients and 5.3% of outpatients were daily smokers, against 25.4% of the general population.
That study also found that smokers were 80% less likely to develop severe symptoms, leading researchers to suggest that the nicotine in cigarettes binds to cell receptor sites, preventing the virus from taking hold by blocking access.
