The claims were made using results from a school of 700 teachers and pupils and their families in a section of France with high levels of COVID-19. Only about 7 percent of smokers were infected while the rate among non-smokers was 400 percent higher. Obviously that’s not an endorsement of smoking, smoking kills. It is, like alcohol, a known carcinogen. The benefit, the authors say, is derived from the nicotine, not the cigarettes. Smoking kills people, but nicotine does not.(1)
Yet nicotine is great for warding off some pests in nature. A modern class of targeted pesticides called neonicotinoids revolutionized agriculture by protecting plants from pests when they are most vulnerable and without mass spraying, and nicotine is common and affordable. The authors believe that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) means that nicotine may act to protect it from attack by SARS-CoV-2.
If this result ends up being real, and not just correlation, it would mean an easy preventative measure. Nicotine gum is available and affordable. Some studies have found chewing gum already helps generate 10 times the normal amount of saliva, which plays a role in preventing lots of infections, but gum companies can’t talk about that because they don’t want FDA thinking they are talking about themselves as a drug.
That wouldn’t prevent people from chewing it anyway.
Meanwhile, in France: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/10/13/smokers-are-less-likely-to-get-covid-french-researchers-explore-whether-nicotine-might-prevent-transmission/
The claims were made using results from a school of 700 teachers and pupils and their families in a section of France with high levels of COVID-19. Only about 7 percent of smokers were infected while the rate among non-smokers was 400 percent higher. Obviously that’s not an endorsement of smoking, smoking kills. It is, like alcohol, a known carcinogen. The benefit, the authors say, is derived from the nicotine, not the cigarettes. Smoking kills people, but nicotine does not.(1)
Yet nicotine is great for warding off some pests in nature. A modern class of targeted pesticides called neonicotinoids revolutionized agriculture by protecting plants from pests when they are most vulnerable and without mass spraying, and nicotine is common and affordable. The authors believe that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) means that nicotine may act to protect it from attack by SARS-CoV-2.
If this result ends up being real, and not just correlation, it would mean an easy preventative measure. Nicotine gum is available and affordable. Some studies have found chewing gum already helps generate 10 times the normal amount of saliva, which plays a role in preventing lots of infections, but gum companies can’t talk about that because they don’t want FDA thinking they are talking about themselves as a drug.
That wouldn’t prevent people from chewing it anyway.