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France is limiting sales of nicotine substitutes after new research suggested that the drug may offer some protection against the coronavirus.
Health bosses say they want to avoid a shortage of products like nicotine patches and chewing gum and to avoid misuse and overuse.
A study published this week, based on 483 patients at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, said smokers were less infected with Covid-19 than others.
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The researchers found that only 5.3 percent of the coronavirus patients studied were smokers, while 25.4 percent of the general population smoked regularly.
But they warned that smokers who became infected would develop more severe symptoms of respiratory illness. British experts say smokers who contract coronavirus are more likely to end up in intensive care than nonsmokers with it.
Since then, the French health ministry has banned online sales of nicotine products and has limited their sale in pharmacies.
People will be allowed to buy just a month’s supply at pharmacies, and a record will be made of everyone who buys them.
“A team of French researchers has written an interesting scientific article that tends to show that there are fewer patients in the population who consume nicotine, and therefore smokers, than in the rest of the population,” said Health Minister Olivier. You see, to parliament.
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“But be careful, this does not mean that Tobacco protects. Tobacco kills, ”said Veran, adding that more than 70,000 people die each year in France from smoking related illnesses.
The study also suggested that nicotine could prevent the virus from entering cells. The theory is that it could bind to cellular receptors, blocking the virus and preventing it from spreading in the body, according to Jean-Pierre Changeux of the Pasteur Institute in France, who was also a co-author of the study.
The researchers await approval from health authorities to carry out more clinical trials.
They plan to use nicotine patches on hospital health workers as evidence.
The sales restrictions should last until May 11, when France will begin to relax the closure measures and reopen the schools.
