Are smokers less affected by Covid-19 thanks to nicotine?

The Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital had conducted a study within the hospital itself, which at first ended with a strange hypothesis. Smokers would be less affected than non-smokersby SARS-CoV-2. Other studies have recently started, including several in Paris. Here’s everything you need to know about it.

Does nicotine protect smokers?

This hypothesis has already been advanced by scientists, such as the neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux on whom he focuses the effects of nicotine in the face of Covid-19. Therefore, several studies are underway, some of them large in Paris. The basis of these studies is the observation that smokers would be “less affected” by Covid-19. The Academy of Sciences then issued a press release with a credible hypothesis explaining that it would not be tobacco but nicotine that had an effect.

This hypothesis is also based on a second observation. It would seem very likely that “The SARS-CoV-2 envelope shows a loop with a similar sequence” to a component of a rabies virus protein. This is known for a related disorder “its attachment to the nicotinic receptor at the nerve-muscle junction”.

Simply put, nicotine could prevent the virus from attaching itself to enter certain cells. All this is just a theory for the moment but increasingly disturbing elements make it solid. It is in particular the theory of the neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux that explains it nicotine would therefore be a brake on the spread of Covid-19.

Three studies in progress

Researchers from the Paris hospitals will conduct a total of three studies. Two of them are already underway and have to distribute nicotine and placebo patches to non-smoking patients, to see the differences and the impact of nicotine against Covid-19.

The latest study is a bit special. Indeed, 1,633 non-smoking caregivers will wear nicotine or placebo patches for nearly six months. The goal is to take a population highly exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and see if that has an impact on the spread of the coronavirus.

There is no need to jump on your cigarette pack

All these hypotheses must be verified and demonstrated, this is the aim of the clinical study that will be launched. But we must be careful with this idea and obviously not encourage people to smoke in order to deal with Covid-19.

Jean-Pierre Changeux and his colleague, Professor Zahir Amoura explain that people shouldn’t be forced to use an addictive substance like nicotine to protect themselves from the coronavirus, especially since the effect of nicotine has not yet been proven and studies confirm that being a smoker would make Covid-19 more dangerous.