Does Nicotine Preserve Covid-19? This theory will be verified by a medical unit at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and by the neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, member of the Academy of Sciences. According to initial observations, smokers are indeed less affected than others by the virus. Their proportion is quite low in patients, as several studies have shown.

At La Pitié-Salpêtrière, where a study focused on 350 hospitalized patients and 139 lighter patients, “only 5% of smokers were infected, which is very low. Basically, we have 80% fewer smokers in patients with Covid-19 than in the general population of the same sex and the same age, ”says professor of internal medicine Zahir Amoura.

“The effect is significant, it divides the risk rate by five for ambulatory patients and by four for hospitalized patients. We hardly observe this phenomenon in medicine ”, underlines Florence Tubach, epidemiologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière.

Just a few weeks ago, a new Chinese study published in the “New England Journal of Medicine” and concerning more than 1000 infected patients went in the same direction, explains “the World”: the percentage of smokers was 12.6 %, well below the proportion of smokers in China (28%).

Hence the approach of the Pitié-Salpêtrière medical team to confirm, by a clinical study which should begin shortly, whether nicotine can have benefits against this disease. According to France-Inter, to find out, patches will be applied to three different audiences and at different dosages:

  • caregivers, preventively, to see if it protects them;
  • to hospitalized patients, to see if symptoms improve;
  • to patients in severe resuscitation, to see if their inflammatory condition improves.