Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Published : April 25, 2020 5:25 PM IST
With the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of abating, scientists across the world are working against time to develop a cure at the earliest. Many trials have started at various places but there is no conclusive evidence of a cure as yet. We are today witnessing an amazing global effort where experts are coming together and completing each other's work to come up with a solution fast. This effort is throwing up some interesting challenges and scientists are also looking at a few unorthodox solutions. After creating much hype over hydroxychloroquine and the tuberculosis vaccine as potential cures for COVID-19, researchers are now shifting their focus to nicotine.
Researchers in France may soon start testing to see if nicotine patch can help prevent COVID-19. This comes after after initial observations showed that an ingredient in tobacco, probably nicotine, could put smokers at a lower risk of getting the disease. Researchers are now awaiting approval from French authorities to start clinical trial of nicotine patch on hospitalised patients and the general population at the Pitie Salpetriere hospital.
The initial study at Pitie Salpetriere, part of the H pitaux de Paris, found that daily smokers have a much lower probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection as compared to the general population. According to the results, only 4.4 per cent of about 350 coronavirus patients hospitalised were regular smokers and 5.3 per cent of 130 homebound patients smoked.
In the French population, the daily smokers rate was 25.4 per cent, said the study published in the journal Qeios. According to researchers, nicotine may help prevent the virus from infecting cells or it may prevent the immune system from overreacting to the virus.
"In order to prevent the infection and the retro-propagation of the virus through the CNS ( central nervous system), we plan a therapeutic assay against Covid-19 with nicotine (and other nicotinic agents) patches or other delivery methods (like sniffing/chewing) in hospitalised patients and in the general population," proposed researchers from Hopitaux de Paris, Paris and Pasteur Institute, Paris in a study which is also published in Qeios.
As the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is still under progression, the identification of prognostic factors is a global challenge. Among epidemiological risk factors, the role of smoking, till date, is not clear. Smoking was initially associated with adverse disease prognosis of COVID- 19, although this finding remains controversial. According to reports, current smokers among COVID-19-infected patients are heterogeneous, ranging from 1.4 per cent to 12.5 per cent. The rates of current smokers remain however strikingly low for the middle-aged population.
A study in China, where the pandemic began, showed only 6.5 per cent of COVID-19 patients were smokers, compared to 26.6 per cent of the general population. Additionally, these studies included mostly hospitalised patients, and the low rate of current smokers may be related to high rate of patients with comorbidities (smokers having been advised to quit) and thus resulting in COVID-19 severity.
