[ad_1]
French researchers plan to test whether nicotine patches will help prevent or lessen the effects of the deadly coronavirus.
Evidence is beginning to show that the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.
Scientists are now wondering if nicotine could prevent the virus from infecting cells, or if it can prevent the immune system from overreacting to infection.
Doctors at a major Paris hospital, who also found low smoking rates among those infected, now plan to give nicotine patches to COVID-19 patients.
They will also be given to front-line workers to see if the stimulant has any effect in preventing the spread of the virus, according to reports.
It comes after world-famous artist David Hockney said last week that he believes smoking could protect people from the deadly coronavirus.
MailOnline examined the science and found that it might have been on something, and one researcher said there was “strangely strong” evidence that it could be true.
A study in China, where the pandemic began, showed that only 6.5 percent of COVID-19 patients were smokers, compared to 26.6 percent of the population.
Another study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in the US USA found that only 1.3 percent of hospitalized patients were smokers, compared to 14 percent in the United States.
French researchers plan to give nicotine patches (pictured) to hospitalized patients with coronavirus, intensive care patients, and front-line workers
It comes after a study found that 4.4% of the 350 hospitalized coronavirus patients were regular smokers and 5.3% of the 130 patients at home smoked compared to the general population. Pictured: A man in a face mask smokes a cigarette in Paris, France, on March 16.
The French study, conducted in Pitié Salpêtrière, part of the Hôpitaux de Paris, used data from 480 patients who tested positive for the virus.
Three hundred and fifty were hospitalized and the rest recovered at home.
The results showed that of the hospitalized patients, with a median age of 65 years, only 4.4 percent were regular smokers. But among those at home, with an average age of 44, 5.3 percent smoked.
In comparison, among the general population, 40 percent of those ages 44 to 53 smoke, and about 11 percent of those ages 65 to 75 smoke.
The researchers found that far fewer smokers appear to have contracted the virus, or if they have, their symptoms are less severe.
The scientists theorized that nicotine could prevent the virus from infecting cells or that nicotine was preventing the immune system from overreacting to the virus. Photo Shows: A man is taken to an ambulance at the West Revere Health Center in Revere, Massachusetts, April 21.
“Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that those who smoke every day are much less likely to develop severe or symptomatic infection with Sars-CoV-2 compared to the general population,” the study says.
‘The effect is significant. Divide the risk by five for outpatients and by four for those admitted to the hospital. We rarely see this in medicine.
The team says it does not advocate for someone to start smoking because cigarettes have fatal health risks.
However, French neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, who reviewed the study, told The Guardian that nicotine may be blocking the virus from entering cells in the body.
Furthermore, the authors theorize that nicotine may decrease the immune system’s overreaction to the virus, leading to serious complications in some patients.
The researchers will verify the study results by giving nicotine patches to hospital patients, those in intensive care and front-line workers.
This is not the first article to suggest that nicotine can prevent coronavirus.
A French study from the Pierre et Marie Curie University found that only 8.5 percent of the 11,000 hospitalized patients with coronavirus were smokers compared to 25.4 percent of the country’s population.
And a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 12.6 percent of 1,100 Chinese patients were current smokers and 1.9 percent were former smokers.
However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that cigarettes may increase the risk of contracting the disease.
“People who smoke cigarettes may have an increased risk of infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and may have poorer COVID-19 results,” the agency told Bloomberg News.
The FDA previously warned of “worse outcomes” for coronavirus among smokers, but did not specify what that meant.
Does smoking PROTECT against coronavirus? That was David Hockney’s surprising claim, but several scientific studies now suggest he might be doing something.
When world-famous artist David Hockney wrote a letter to the Daily Mail saying he believes smoking could protect people against the coronavirus that many made fun of.
Hockney wrote: ‘Could it be that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus? With all these numbers, it’s starting to look that way to me. “
Understandably, the claim was dismissed as ridiculous and “junk” by many.
But is it?
A leading infectious disease expert at University College London, Professor Francois Balloux, said there is “strangely strong” evidence that it could be true.
And data from multiple Chinese studies show that COVID-19 hospital patients contained a lower proportion of smokers than the general population (6.5 percent compared to 26.6 percent), suggesting they were less likely. to end up in the hospital.
Another study, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of more than 7,000 people who tested positive for coronavirus, found that only 1.3 percent of them were smokers, against 14 percent of all Americans the CDC says they smoke.
The study also found that smokers were not more likely to end up in the hospital or in an ICU.
The reasons for this are not clear.
The evidence from scientific studies is conflicting, and some say doctors are too busy to accurately record everyone’s smoking habits.
Some researchers suggest that smoking could reverse one of the ways that COVID-19 damages the lungs, while others argue that lung damage caused by smoke makes organs more susceptible to failure.
Governments in both the United Kingdom and the United States urge people to quit smoking to protect themselves from the virus, but scientists admit that there is no clear evidence that cigarettes can worsen the disease.
The eccentric artist David Hockney, who is a smoker, asked in a letter to the Daily Mail ‘Couldn’t it be that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus?’
In his letter, Mr. Hockney wrote: “ I used to joke that being a smoker in Malibu was the equivalent of being a non-smoker in Pasadena. They used to have very bad pollution there.
‘Couldn’t it be that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus? With all these numbers, it’s starting to look that way to me. ”
The 82-year-old British artist living in France adds “I am serious” and has revealed in the past that he has smoked for over 60 years, but is still considered healthy.
Around 1.1 billion people worldwide smoke cigarettes despite evidence that they cause lung cancer, heart disease, and many other life-threatening illnesses.
However, it is not clear if they make people more likely to end up in the hospital or die if they capture COVID-19.
A study published earlier this month by scientists in New York and Athens claims otherwise.
He analyzed 13 Chinese studies that had recorded smoking as a precondition and found that the number of smokers in the entire sample of 5,300 patients was 6.5 percent. An astonishingly small number in a country where half the men still smoke.
“This preliminary analysis does not support the argument that smoking is currently a risk factor for hospitalization for COVID-19,” he says.
Instead, these consistent observations, which are further emphasized by the current low prevalence of smoking among COVID-19 patients in the US (1.3 percent), hypothesize that nicotine may have beneficial effects. on COVID-19 “.
A group of studies from China found that the average proportion of coronavirus patients who were classified as smokers, out of a total of nearly 6,000 people, was only 6.5 percent. For comparison, more than 26% of the country’s population as a whole are smokers.
WHAT IS AN ACE-2 RECEIVER AND WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH COVID-19?
ACE-2 receptors are structures on the surface of cells in the lungs and airways that work with an enzyme called ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) to regulate blood pressure.
Its exact function in the lungs is not well understood, but studies suggest that it protects against lung damage, and low levels may worsen the impact of viral infections.
Scientists say the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 enters the body through the ACE-2 receptor, which its shape allows it to latch on.
This means that someone with more ACE-2 receptors may be more susceptible to a large viral load, the first infectious dose of a virus, that enters their bloodstream.
Scientists say ACE-2 receptors are shaped to match the outside of the coronavirus, effectively providing a gateway to the bloodstream
People who have higher than normal ACE-2 receptor numbers may include those with diabetes or high blood pressure because they have genetic defects that cause them to produce more. Emerging evidence shows that smokers can also produce more.
However, high levels of ACE-2 receptors may also be protective.
They are believed to protect the lungs during infection, and a 2008 mouse study found that mice that had ACE-2 blocked in their bodies suffered more damage when infected with SARS, which is almost identical to COVID-19.
In the past, smoking has been repeatedly associated with lower than normal levels of ACE-2 receptors, which could increase the risk of lung damage from COVID-19.
The document has not been reviewed by other scientists and admits that it is based on limited data, but says that nicotine and the coronavirus interact with the same receptors on cells within the lungs.
It was conducted by Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos and Dr. Anastasia Barbouni, of the University of West Attica in Athens, and Dr. Raymond Niaura of the University of New York.
They suggest that while the virus causes lung damage by depleting the number of those receptors, known as ACE-2 receptors, smoking can increase the number of them and reverse the effect.
ACE-2 receptors, found in cells of the airways and lungs, are said to work as the gateway for the coronavirus into the body and ‘facilitate’ infection.
So having more of them seems to be a bad thing, but scientists say they have a protective effect on the lungs and that low levels are linked to further damage from a viral infection.
A 2008 study in mice found that getting rid of ACE-2 made animals more likely to experience severe breathing difficulties when infected with the SARS virus, which is almost identical to COVID-19. The role of ACE-2 in human lungs is poorly understood.
Dr. Farsalinos’ study was shared on Twitter by Professor Francois Balloux, director of the Institute of Genetics at University College London.
Professor Balloux described the article as “puzzling” and added: “While the study design is far from perfect, and the authors are clear about its limitations, the evidence for a protective effect of smoking (or nicotine) against COVID-19 it’s strangely strong … actually much stronger than for any drug tested at this stage … ‘
It is a claim that has been emerging around the world.
French scientist Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads a scientific council that advises the country’s government on COVID-19, said: ‘We have something very special about tobacco.
“We have found that the vast majority of severe cases are not smokers, as if … tobacco protected against this virus through nicotine,” French news site Sud Ouest reported.
Dr. Farsalinos ‘study adds by way of explanation:’ Decreased availability of ACE-2 has been observed to contribute to lung injury and the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome.
“Therefore, increased ACE-2 expression, while paradoxical, may protect against acute lung injury caused by COVID-19.”
This is a disputed area of science: there are studies showing that smoking can increase and decrease the levels of ACE-2 available in someone’s lung cells.
A spike before infection could allow more viruses to enter the body in the first place, making someone more vulnerable to the disease.
An article published by scientists at University College London offers the opposite opinion to Dr. Farsalinos.
It read: ‘SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to enter cells through the ACE-2 receptor.
‘Some evidence suggests that gene expression and subsequent levels of receptors are elevated in the oral and airways [cells] of current smokers, putting smokers at higher risk for SARS-CoV-2.
“Other studies, however, show that nicotine negatively regulates the ACE-2 receptor.”
Professor Jamie Brown, an addiction researcher at UCL and one of the authors who wrote that article, told MailOnline that the link is “very difficult to understand.”
‘Everything we know about other respiratory viruses and comorbidities [health problems] suggests that smokers will suffer worse results, “he said.
Only recently, an article published this year claims to be the first, scientists have begun to record that smoking increases ACE-2 levels in the airways.
It was previously reported to lower levels, something researchers have linked to worse lung damage in coronavirus infections.
While higher levels of the receptor may offer some protection in theory, they also offer more doors through which the virus can enter the body.
The study in the European Respiratory Journal said: ‘While upregulation of ACE-2 may be helpful in protecting the host against acute lung injury, chronically, this may predispose people to an increased risk of coronavirus infections, which uses this receptor to gain entry to epithelial cells.
Professor Brown added that, considering how smoking influences other lung infections, he would be “very surprised” if COVID-19 did not worsen.
One article suggested that one reason why children appear not to be seriously affected overall by the coronavirus could be that they have more ACE-2 receptors than adults, but added that ‘there is a lack of evidence to show that expression of ACE-2 varies with age. “
The study by Dr. Farsalinos and colleagues even suggested that withdrawal symptoms from not being able to smoke in the hospital could worsen the symptoms of cigarette users.
He added: ‘Hospitalization for COVID-19 will inevitably result in abrupt nicotine withdrawal and its beneficial effect linked to this hypothesis in smokers or users of other nicotine products.
“This could, at least in part, explain the association between smoking and the severity of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.”
The theory that smokers have some level of protection against the virus is derived from crude hospital data suggesting that only small proportions of seriously ill patients smoke.
Hospitals in China, the United States, Germany, and France have had hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients, but admitted a disproportionately small number of smokers.
According to the campaign group, Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, the first data showed that in Germany between 6 and 21 percent; and in France six percent compared to 27 percent.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US USA They showed that of about 7,000 COVID-19 patients, ex-smokers were more likely to be hospitalized or taken to intensive care than current smokers.
Only 22 of the hospital patients and five of the intensive care patients admitted to being smokers, while 45 in the hospital and 33 in the ICU said they were former smokers.
Public Health England has not published any information on people diagnosed or hospitalized with coronavirus in the UK.
Why then, scientists asked, do smokers constitute such a small proportion of patients when there are significantly more of them in countries?
Experts have shot down this theory and say reporting on who smokes and who doesn’t has not been accurate enough.
UCL Professor Brown told MailOnline: “It is difficult to assess how well smoking has been recorded in an emerging epidemic and many of these people have been too ill to respond or have not responded with complete honesty.”
He added: “We know that overall smokers tend to come from low-income groups that have poorer access to health care … so they are more likely to die in the community.”
Professor Paul Hunter, a former NHS physician and now a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, agreed that the recording is likely to blame.
He told MailOnline: ‘One interpretation is that smokers are less likely to end up in the hospital.
“But it’s actually more of an indication that when you have doctors who are incredibly busy, they don’t complete all the questions they would normally ask.”
Professor Hunter added that the notion that smoking could protect people from COVID-19 was “junk,” but he admitted that the ACE-2 receptor linkage warranted further study.
EARLY DATA FROM THE UNITED STATES ONLY 1.3 PERCENT OF CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS ARE SMOKING
Early data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that only 1.3 percent of people diagnosed with COVID-19 were classified as smokers.
Of a sample of 7,162 of the nation’s first patients, only 96 were ‘current smokers’. According to the data, only 22 of 1,037 patients in the hospital were smokers, along with five of 457 in intensive care.
This stands in stark contrast to CDC statistics showing that 14 percent of all Americans smoke cigarettes regularly.
It is unclear whether there is a link between smoking and a lower risk of contracting or becoming ill with coronavirus, or if the record of who smokes and who does not is up to par.
Professor Jamie Brown of University College London, a tobacco and public health expert, said he hopes it will be the latter.
He told MailOnline: ‘It is really difficult to assess how well smoking status has been recorded in an emerging epidemic and many of these people have been too ill to respond or may not have responded with complete honesty.
“We know that overall smokers tend to come from low-income groups that have less access to health care and are more likely to die in the community.”
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States showed that of about 7,000 patients with COVID-19, ex-smokers were more likely to be hospitalized or taken to intensive care than current smokers .
A study of 41 patients at Jin Yin-tan Hospital in Wuhan found that none of the 13 patients who needed to be admitted to the ICU were current smokers. In contrast, 11 percent (three) of those who did not need intensive care were smokers.
A study of 552 hospitals in China, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that of the 173 patients who had severe symptoms, 16.9 percent of them were current smokers and 5.2 percent had previously smoked. In comparison, of the patients with less severe symptoms, 11.8 percent were current smokers and 1.3 percent were ex-smokers.
A study of 140 patients with coronavirus found that among the 58 patients with serious illnesses, 3.4% (two people) were current smokers and 6.9% (four) were ex-smokers. In comparison, of the 82 with milder symptoms, none were current smokers and 3.7 percent (three) were former smokers
Researchers at Wuhan University Zhongnan Hospital concluded that only 1.4 percent of the 140 hospitalized patients were smokers.
The NYU Grossman School of Medicine study found that only five percent of coronavirus hospitalizations were current smokers, about the same percentage seen in the group that did not need hospital care.
A researcher at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, Jason Sheltzer, separated Dr. Farsalinos’ article. On twitter with a similar logic, calling the study “seriously flawed”.
He said that the measures for what defined a smoker varied across the world and in the multiple studies referenced in the document. One of them, he said, only classified very heavy smokers and not those with lighter habits.
A deeper dive into the data, Sheltzer wrote, revealed that smoking actually seemed to be linked to an increased risk of serious infection.
He said: ‘To further investigate, I e-mailed the authors of some of the studies on COVID-19 in China. One doctor replied that his frequency of smoking was very low because some patients were literally too ill to answer the question.
“So … it’s clear that in these studies, the definition of smoker is neither consistent nor consistently applied. You can’t just throw them all on one graph and call it a meta-analysis.”
He added: ‘In summary, I think this analysis is seriously flawed. They are comparing statistics that should not be compared.
“I don’t think there is any convincing evidence that smoking protects against the coronavirus.”
Government agencies insist that people should not consider smoking as protection against the disease, which can be deadly, especially for people who already have health problems.
Both Public Health England and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have urged people to quit smoking to protect their health.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last month: “From research on previous coronaviruses, it is very clear that smoking worsens the impact of a coronavirus.”
And his main medical advisor, Professor Chris Whitty, added: “If you are going to quit smoking, this is a very good time to do it.”
[ad_2]
