“Correlation is not the same cause”, He says in an interview with Rádio Observador, stressing that in this counting a third factor is not taken into account: age. “Smoking makes you die sooner”, he sums up. In fact, the higher incidence of symptoms in older people, combined with the existence of fewer elderly smokers (since those who do not smoke have a longer average life expectancy), may contribute to a hasty conclusion.
The conclusion that the incidence of the disease among smokers is relatively low, however, is not unique to China. In France, according to data from the Paris hospital cited by Le Monde, among 11 thousand hospitalized patients, only 8.5% were smokers. This is in a country with a smoking rate of 25.4%.
These data led a group of researchers from the university hospital in Paris and the Pasteur Institute, which includes the renowned French biologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, the seek to understand the motivations behind the lower incidence of the disease among smokers.
In a study still in the process of scientific review, whose pre-publication is available in public access, the researchers suggest that there are similarities between the receptors that allow coronavirus to enter human cells and the nicotine receptors – that is, that the virus also enters human cells through these receptors that also allow the entry of nicotine. In this sense, the study’s authors point to the possibility that the administration of nicotine – but not the consumption of tobacco – could be used as “preventive agent against Covid-19 infection”. Upon entering the human body through those receptors, nicotine could block coronavirus from entering cells, preventing infection, the study argues.
“One cannot forget that nicotine is a drug of abuse, responsible for tobacco addiction. Smoking has serious pathological consequences and is a health hazard. However, in controlled circumstances, nicotinic agents can provide an efficient treatment for an acute infection like Covid-19, ”argue the researchers.
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