Onderzoeksbevinding: nicotine ‘vecht’ met corona wie je mag slopen – ‘Smokers Less Likely to Catch COVID-19’ –
9 June 2020
13:20
According to new research, smokers are less likely to contract the coronavirus. A new Israeli study adds to previous research into the matter, such as this French study that also agreed on nicotine as a possible way to keep COVID-19 at bay.
It’s an interesting discovery, especially as a previous British study had found the opposite was true.
The Israeli study was published in non-peer reviewed journal medRxiv on Friday.
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The team found out that 10% of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 smoked, compared with 19% of the general population. What the researchers believe is that nicotine, the addictive part of tobacco found in cigarettes, competes with the virus to bind with cells in the body. Thus, the virus is blocked from entering the system.
A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications
SARS-CoV-2 epidemics raises a considerable issue of public health at the planetary scale. There is a pressing urgency to find treatments based upon currently available scientific knowledge. Therefore, we tentatively propose a hypothesis which hopefully might ultimately help saving lives. Based on the current scientific literature and on new epidemiological data which reveal that current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the infection by SARS-CoV-2 [1], we hypothesize that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of Covid-19 infection and might represent a target for the prevention and control of Covid-19 infection.
