Weird science....smokers may have a better chance with COVID-19!!

[Wolfcub]

So is it the nicotine? Or is it a specific type of airway damage which is the reason?

Smokers have some changes in the ACE2 receptors in the lungs. The coronavirus latches onto ACE2 receptors, and that particular structural damage makes it very hard for it to do that.

Smoking and COVID-19:

A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications
jean-pierre CHANGEUX, Zahir Amoura, Felix Rey, Makoto Miyara.

https://www.qeios.com/read/FXGQSB

There is also some possibility that nicotine (as patches or gum) could be used in treatment/prevention. But obviously for those who are not already addicted, nicotine brings its own set of quite nasty side effects.

But it's interesting, nonetheless.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Definitely interesting.

Smoking and/or nicotine may also prevent or at least ameliorate Parkinson's disease, as well as preventing Alzheimer's dementia.

Yippee ???!!!???

 

[Wolfcub]

as well as preventing Alzheimer's dementia.

Well my mother bless her lovely Soul, had smoked since world war 2 and was on at least 30 a day in her 80s, and sadly she got very bad dementia in the last years of her life.
But we used to share some good Gin and Vermouths in some of our late nights despite the dementia in her final year or so and had a few laughs.
Perfection is for the gods.....

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Well my mother bless her lovely Soul, had smoked since world war 2 and was on at least 30 a day in her 80s, and sadly she got very bad dementia in the last years of her life.

Oh, damn ....

Perfection is for the gods.....

Well, they can keep it. Perfection is boring. Which is lucky, considering how little of it there is on this smoky little ill-bred nightclub of a planet (to quote an old friend of mine ....)