Along with other findings, the existing findings published today in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research press recommendations for developing tobacco control efforts to counter COVID-19.
“Previous studies have shown that smoking increases the risk of COVID-19 disease severity, but the risk of infection was less clear,” said Melanie Dove, a tobacco researcher at UC Davis and lead author of the study. It shows that smokers have a higher threat of viral infection, adding coronavirus and respiratory diseases. “
Study results
The researchers reanalyzed data from the British Cold Study (BCS), a challenge study from 1986 to 1989 that exposed 399 healthy adults to one of five “cold” viruses. This included a common type of coronavirus (coronavirus 229E) that existed before the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 virus), which causes COVID-19 disease. Data from the British Cold Study are available on Carnegie Mellon University’s The Common Cold Project website.
UC Davis researchers calculated the overall and specific relative risks of unadjusted and adjusted coronavirus for existing smokers and all end outcomes (infection and disease), testing whether all arrangements changed across respiratory virus type.
The knowledge showed that existing smokers had a higher threat of infections and respiratory viral diseases, with no significant differences between virus types. The highest associations for coronavirus 229E alone failed to achieve statistical significance. participants, 20 of whom were smokers.
These effects are consistent with known smoking-caused harms to immune and respiratory defenses and some observational evidence of a buildup in COVID-19 infection and disease progression in existing smokers.
“In addition to looking for fixes through virus type, one of the main reasons we re-analyzed the original UK bloodless study is to report a threat index rather than a probability index,” Dove explained. “Probability indices can overestimate the strength of an array if an event is not unusual (less than 10%), then our effects are a bit lower (1. 48 compared to 2. 1 in the BCS). to consult tobacco decisions. “
Compared to other study designs, BCS is considered a high-quality study due to its randomised trial design, lack of limited data, clear definitions of prestige for smokers, and laboratory-confirmed data. Observational studies have limitations. These come with existing smokers who are more likely to get tested due to higher symptoms and the fact that the prestige of smoking is not reported in electronic fitness records. In addition, other inflamed people who quit smoking immediately prior to testing or hospitalization are registered as nonsmokers or former smokers.
One of the main limitations of this study is that the non-unusual benign coronavirus 229E could have other biological and health effects than other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. In other words, the effects would not be generalizable to other coronaviruses.
“These findings would possibly have implications for smoking ling at the population point as a strategy to prevent COVID-19 infection,” said senior author Elisa Tong, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine. “A quarter of the U. S. populationYou smoke lately or have high levels of cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, and there is no safe point of smoke exposure for nonsmokers.
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