Outcomes of infection in smokers may be more severe than in non-smokers
The spread of infectious diseases always goes hand in hand with the emergence of various myths and not always well-founded statements about how not to pick up such a disease, and if you get sick - to be cured (for example, everyone knows that you need to eat garlic to prevent flu and colds). The COVID-19 pandemic was no exception: there was an opinion that this infection does not take smokers. For example, journalist Alexander Nevzorov says: “As it turned out, the dastardly virus prefers not to get involved with smokers and cannot stand the smell of tobacco. No conspiracy theories. Nobody is hiding these data”.
The smell of tobacco is, of course, a figurative expression. But no one really hides the data on the relationship between the disease and smoking. And this is sometimes really very strange data. Traditionally, it is believed that a smoker's lungs, weakened by a bad habit, are more susceptible to respiratory diseases. However, in early February, a group of Chinese doctors published the unexpected results of a survey of 1,099 cases. 85.4% of them said they had never smoked - and this is in China, where more than half of men and about a third of the entire adult population smoke. Further - more: in the journal of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Allergy, an article soon appeared on the clinical characteristics of 140 infected. There were only two active smokers among them - 1.4%.
The article urges not to draw far-reaching conclusions from this yet. "The relationship between smoking and coronavirus infection is not clear, and the exact reasons behind the decline in COVID-19 in active smokers are still unknown," the authors emphasize. However, they warn that the outcome of infection in smokers may be more serious than in those who do not smoke.
Indeed, there are no unambiguous data yet. In another sample among Chinese patients, the share of smokers was already 12.6% - which, however, is also relatively small. One author neatly concludes, based on the available evidence, that smoking may not be a predisposing factor for the disease, and encourages more cases to be awaited, outside of Asia. At the same time, in articles analyzing the expression of the ACE2 gene, which is used by the new coronavirus to enter the cell, on the contrary, it is shown that smokers are more susceptible to Covid-19. And according to another study, among Chinese patients diagnosed with pneumonia caused by COVID-19, the probability of disease progression (including death) was 14 times higher among people with a history of smoking compared with those who did not smoke - thus,smoking has proven to be one of the main risk factors for those with complications of the disease.
So for now, smokers are unlikely to expect that a bad habit will save them from a pandemic, and, of course, one must remember that smoking is harmful to health in any case.
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Author: Vladimir Razuvaev