Studies have shown that nicotine can prevent coronaviruses! What's going on here?

June 4, 2020 /
BioValleyBIOON /-- You might be surprised if you notice recent headlines that smoking can prevent COVID-19after all, we know that smoking is harmful to healthIt is a major risk factor for heart disease, lung disease and many cancersSmoking also reduces our immunity and makes us more susceptible to respiratory infections, including pneumoniasmokers touch their mouths and faces more, which increases the risk of contracting COVID-19initial observations suggest that smoking history increases the risk of poor prognosis in patients with COVID-19, as the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies have confirmedbut a recent paper on the smoking rate of COVID-19 patients in a French hospital suggests that smoking may reduce people's susceptibility to COVID-19 infectionWhat's going on here? what didresearch do?the study was a cross-sectional study in which researchers assessed both exposure (smoking) and outcomes (COVID-19)This type of research design does not prove that exposure leads to results -- only there may be an associationthe study included 343 inpatients with new coronary pneumonia admitted from 28 February to 30 March and 139 outpatients admitted from 23 March to 9 AprilIn other data collected, participants were asked if they smoked nowpicture source: https://cn.bing.com
researchers compared smoking rates in both groups to those in the general population in France results study found that 4.4 percent of inpatients were smokers and 5.3 percent of outpatients were smokers after adjusting for age and gender differences this is only a small fraction of the prevalence of the French general population About 25.4% of people are reported to smoke every day in 2018 "Current smokers are much less likely to develop symptoms or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection than the general population," the authors concluded "
a quick review of 28 studies of COVID-19 patients from different countries, other places have also recently described findings of a lower proportion of smokers in COVID-19 cases the french study authors say nicotine is the mechanism behind the protective effects of smoking SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that causes COVID-19, which enters human cells by attaching it to a protein receptor called ACE2, which is present on the surface of certain cells researchers suggest that nicotine adheres to the ACE2 receptor, preventing the virus from attaching and potentially reducing the number of viruses entering the body's lung cells researchers are now planning to test their hypothesis in a randomized trial involving nicotine patches, although the trial is still awaiting approval from French health authorities so how do we interpret the results? the result of these counterintuitive effects may be some bias, so let's explore some alternative explanations first of all, we call it "choice bias" Inpatients are less likely to smoke every day than the general population For example, health care workers and people with chronic conditions were overrepresented in the inpatient sample, which typically had lower smoking rates in addition, about 60 per cent of inpatients are ex-smokers (similar to the national prevalence rate) WHO has declared smoking a risk factor for COVID-19, and some people may have only recently given up smoking But in this study, they were classified as non-daily smokers the second is what we call "social lyno bias" When asked about smoking in hospitals, PATIENTS WITH COVID-19 MAY BE MORE LIKELY TO REFUSE TO ADMIT TO SMOKING AND WANT MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS TO SEE THAT THEY ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING In busy hospitals where COVID-19 cases are full, data collection on behavioral problems may be incomplete finally, it is worth noting that this paper has not yet been peer-reviewed , although there appears to be a link between smoking and COVID-19 in these hospital-based samples, there is no evidence of a causal link between the two, i.e smoking prevents COVID-19 a large number of studies are conducted at epidemiological rates
we must acknowledge that the study was conducted at the "pandemic rate" much faster than the usual research time frame usually takes months from submission to publication, but this time the researchers completed their observations and published their findings online within the same month An unexpected consequence of earlier publishing studies is that it may trigger excessive community hope or belief in unproven treatments after the study was published, French authorities had to restrict the sale of nicotine treatment drugs to avoid hoarding recently, we saw a similar phenomenon in hydroxychloroquine, and after politicians announced that hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID-19, the supply of people who needed it was exhausted image source: https://cn.bing.com
So now we need to do extra effort to ensure that early evidence is not misunderstood or exaggerated the role of smoking in COVID-19, a link that requires extensive research and critical evaluation Because on the whole, smoking is still fatal blind peer-reviewed overall, other explanations were possible for observations of low smoking rates in the French hospital sampleprovided a reasonable explanation is the error of recording smoking In general, there is evidence of underreporting and underreporting of smoking in hospital samples it's unclear what methods were used in the study to collect data on smoking The authors simply state that patients are "inquired" and that "data are collected in the context of care" It's important to know who asked the smoking question, what questions they asked, when they asked, and what recording system was used considering that clinical smoking records may not accurately record all smokers, a better comparison is to compare 2020 data with data for pre-COVID-19 hospitalized patients rather than with general population data that may pose different questions (biovalleybioon.com) References: 1, Does nicotine protect us against coronavirus? 2 COVID-19 and smoking: A-league review of the of the of the French Doctor Suggests Smoking May Protect Against COVID-19 Infection .4) Challenges with Collecting Smoking In In Electronic Health Records 5, France limit s product research research Low rate of daily active tobacco smoking in patients with symptomatic COVID-19 https://doi.org/10.32388/WPP19W.4