April 29, 2020 - Today in the world of coronavirus news:
Few of those hospitalized with the coronavirus are smokers, and researchers are trying to understand why, according to VICE.
One hypothesis is that nicotine, which has anti-inflammatory properties, may interfere with the way that COVID-19 causes an overreaction of the immune system.
The hypothesis comes from Konstantinos Farsalinos, a cardiologist in Greece who focuses on tobacco-use reduction. Farsalinos noticed that few COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized in China were smokers, though about half of men in the country smoke.
Farsalinos and colleagues wrote a new paper available as a preprint and scheduled to be published in Internal and Emergency Medicine. They found that among 13 studies in China with nearly 6,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the rate of smokers ranged from 1.4% to 12.6%. No studies recorded e-cigarette use.
“The results were remarkably consistent across all studies and were recently verified in the first case series of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.,” the authors wrote, calling for an “urgent investigation.”
Of course, Farsalinos doesn't recommend that people should begin smoking simply to attempt to avoid a severe case of COVID-19. Smoking is still a leading cause of preventable death across the globe.
“We all know that smoking is obviously bad for you,” Raymond Niaura of New York University told VICE. Niaura co-authored the paper with Farsalinos. “It follows logically that smokers would be way worse off. I would think that too. But I've been surprised: That's not the story we're necessarily seeing.”
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200430/smokers-hospitalized-less-often-for-covid-19