Smoking and Covid-19 – a debate between emotions and facts

Apparently fewer smokers among Covid 19 patients than expected

Using a survey of around 500 inpatient and outpatient Covid-19 patients at the Sorbonne university hospital “APHP Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital” in Paris, the researchers wanted to investigate the question of whether “smoking prevents the SARS-CoV-2 virus from infection causes or affects the severity of the disease ”. To this end, the respondents asked whether they were (daily) smokers or not. The scientists found a proportion of 4.4 percent smokers among the 139 outpatients and 5.3 percent of the 343 inpatients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. They compared these figures with the last figures of the French population as a whole in 2018, in which the proportion of smokers is 25.4 percent.

The researchers gave their article the title “Low incidence of daily active tobacco smoking in patients with symptomatic COVID-19” and speculated that nicotine could have an effect on the expression of ACE2 – the membrane-bound receptor protein “angiotensin converting enzyme 2” among other things in the lung tissue, which the virus uses as the main entry point into the cells. It could block the receptor and thus protect against infection with SARS-CoV-2.

“Our results should be interpreted cautiously and we are aware of the limitations,” write the researchers – which, however, does not mean that various media use headings such as “Protects smoking from Covid-19”, “Helps nicotine against corona” or “Network Smoking eV” “Did not hold up before the caption of her press release with” Smokers are less likely to get corona sick – smoking network against fake news “.

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