[HN Gopher] Smoking and Covid-19 Again
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Smoking and Covid-19 Again
        
       Author : thinkingemote
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2021-04-21 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com)
        
       | jdhn wrote:
       | It seems that this boils down to nicotine intake vs no nicotine
       | intake. I wonder if this protective effect would change for
       | people who use other tobacco products, such as dip or snus.
        
         | xyzzy123 wrote:
         | I don't know if we can identify nicotine as a causative agent
         | so soon.
         | 
         | If we take one possible hypothesis for this finding, immune
         | suppression (say, smoking makes COVID-19 less harmful by
         | reducing the chance of cytokine storms), we can see that
         | nicotine might or might not be protective.
         | 
         | Possible that cigarettes suppress immune response (via the many
         | combustion products and additives) in ways that other nicotine
         | products (vape or non burnt tobacco) don't.
         | 
         | I did find one paper which reports that nicotine alone seems to
         | be harmful but have not had a deep look:
         | 
         | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.198630v1....
        
         | moistbar wrote:
         | I'd be even more curious to see if it holds true for people who
         | vape, since vape juice tends to have very little in it besides
         | nicotine, polyethylene glycol, and flavoring.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-04-21 23:02 UTC)