Does nicotine combat COVID-19? French scientists to test theory as data shows pattern

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A study of public health data appears to show that smokers are 80 per cent less likely to catch COVID-19 than comparable non-smokers

Maybe it’s time to talk about cigarettes and COVID-19. As a smoker I did not really want to be at the forefront of this conversation. When early data from China, where half of adult males smoke, showed that current cigarette smokers were bizarrely underrepresented among severe COVID-19 cases, I was happy to let Vice have its countercultural fun with the story. When the same thing seemed to be happening in France, the United States and elsewhere, I let the revered Economist handle it.

Things got a little more serious on Thursday, when researchers based in England, with the renowned Ben Goldacre as joint principal investigator, released a population-based study of COVID-19 risk factors based on National Health Service electronic health records. The “smoker’s paradox,” up until that moment a sort of odd smell that was motivating small-scale French research into nicotine, fell out of the data and lay wriggling like a boated flounder on the floor.

This is prospectively collected data, albeit in rushed “preprint” form, from a sample of 17 million people. It turned out current smokers had a significantly lower risk of COVID-19 death than both never-smokers and former smokers when you correct for other variables, including many of the health problems that smoking intensifies. (Note that former smokers will still have these, but should still, as any doctor will tell you till your ears plop off, be better off than those who have kept the habit.)

Read full article here.

Reuters – National Post – April 27, 2020.

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