HEALTH Current Tobacco Smokers Hospitalized Less Often for COVID-19

[ainitfunny]

Smokers Hospitalized Less Often for COVID-19
By Carolyn Crist (from Web MD website)

April 29, 2020 - Today in the world of coronavirus news:

Few of those hospitalized with the coronavirus are smokers, and researchers are trying to understand why, according to VICE.
One hypothesis is that nicotine, which has anti-inflammatory properties, may interfere with the way that COVID-19 causes an overreaction of the immune system.
The hypothesis comes from Konstantinos Farsalinos, a cardiologist in Greece who focuses on tobacco-use reduction. Farsalinos noticed that few COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized in China were smokers, though about half of men in the country smoke.

Farsalinos and colleagues wrote a new paper available as a preprint and scheduled to be published in Internal and Emergency Medicine. They found that among 13 studies in China with nearly 6,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the rate of smokers ranged from 1.4% to 12.6%. No studies recorded e-cigarette use.

“The results were remarkably consistent across all studies and were recently verified in the first case series of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.,” the authors wrote, calling for an “urgent investigation.”
Of course, Farsalinos doesn't recommend that people should begin smoking simply to attempt to avoid a severe case of COVID-19. Smoking is still a leading cause of preventable death across the globe.

“We all know that smoking is obviously bad for you,” Raymond Niaura of New York University told VICE. Niaura co-authored the paper with Farsalinos. “It follows logically that smokers would be way worse off. I would think that too. But I've been surprised: That's not the story we're necessarily seeing.”

In France, researchers plan to test nicotine patches on hospital workers and patients who tested positive for COVID-19, according to The Guardian.
Another preprint paper, based on a study in Paris, found data similar to that seen in China. Among 350 people admitted to the hospital, about 4.4% were regular smokers.
Data in the U.S. look similar as well, according to the CDC. Among 7,000 hospitalized patients, about 1.3% were current smokers and 2.3% were former smokers, though about 14% of the country smokes.

Still, researchers have emphasized that the correlation could be due to other things. Maybe smokers are dying before they go to the hospital, or maybe smokers are not classified correctly in hospital records, according to VICE.
For now, scientists and public health experts are studying the hypotheses as quickly as they can.

Public health agencies continue to encourage people to quit smoking and vaping during the pandemic since COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that can severely affect the lungs.
The FDA, for instance, issued an update on Tuesday that said smokers may be more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19.
“There's never been a better time to quit smoking,” the FDA said.

*************************************
I would say that people have known for thousands of years that smoke kills germs.
I distrust the official “party line opinion” about everything SO MUCH that I would recommend doing the opposite of whatever they say.

 

[fairywell]

Interesting Article. Funny how an article discussing the low rate of hospitalization and covid cases among smokers ends with "There's never been a better time to quit smoking," the FDA said.

 

[ainitfunny]

Here is another article suggesting smokers get sicker after hospitalization because they are not allowed to smoke!

Low incidence of daily active tobacco smoking in patients with symptomatic COVID-19

Importance: As the pandemic of COVID-19 is still under progression, identification of prognostic factors remains a global challenge. The role of cigarette smoking has been suggested among the disease’s epidemiological risk factors, although it is hig...

www.qeios.com

It is a long article/ study so I just paste the “conclusion”:

As hospitals generally impose smoking cessation and nicotine withdrawal at the time of hospitalization, tobacco (nicotine) cessation could lead to the release of nicotine receptors, that are increased in smokers, and to a “rebound effect” responsible for the worsening of disease observed in hospitalized smokers.

Our findings should be interpreted cautiously and we are aware of its limitations. First, the study was performed in 2020 and the results were compared to data obtained from the French general population’s smoking rate in 2018. However, it is very unlikely that a dramatic decrease in tobacco use may have occurred in France since mid 2018. The SIRs were estimated with the assumption that the studied population who lives in a limited area around a Parisian hospital has the same smoking habits as the general French population. Actually, smoking rates differ across socio-professional categories, and therefore may differ across geographic areas. It should also be noted that in the present study, healthcare workers were over-represented in the outpatient group, due to systematic testing at their work place when they become symptomatic, but not in the inpatient group (data not shown). It is, however, very unlikely that the very low SIRs that were estimated both for the out- and inpatient groups are the result of the study setting.

Under or over-reporting of smoking status may also be a concern for studies on smoking habits. It has been reported that smoking status tend to be more frequently reported in medical files of patients with comorbidities. However, our study has a very low rate of missing data regarding smoking status, and sensitivity analyses have shown that they do not alter the robustness of our results. Finally, in our study, smoking status was assessed only in symptomatic COVID-19 patients while a large part of infected individuals are asymptomatic[18]

In conclusion, our results suggest that active smokers may be protected against symptomatic covid-19. This was true for outpatients (who have less serious infections) as well as for hospitalized patients. Nicotine and the nicotinic receptor (and not the smoke of cigarettes per se, which is responsible for a very heavy public health burden with more than 78,000 deaths per year in France) may be indeed involved in the pathway leading to viral infection, and particularly in the most severe forms of the disease. Nicotine administration, e.g. via a transcutaneous route may be tested as a therapy to recapitulate the protecting effect of smoking against SARS CoV2 infection

 

[psychgirl]

IIRC, the same thing was found (then quickly brushed aside) for the H1N1 pandemic.
That smokers were less likely to catch it or get really sick (?)

 

[ainitfunny]

Here is another study THAT JUST CAME OUT NOV 30, 2020, (also stating that the French public got wind of the nicotine effect and were buying nicotine patches for Covid19 and the government quickly put a limit on buying the nicotine patches!)

CURRENT EVIDENCE
We searched the literature for studies relating to COVID-19 and nicotine. Some are underway, and this piece will be updated as new findings emerge. In the meantime, the available research literature is mainly in the form of speculative commentaries, with some lab studies also reported.

Commentaries regarding nicotine and COVID-19 all agree nicotine potentially has a role to play based on its role in the renin-angiotensin system. In particular, nicotine can impact the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) 2, which is relevant because coronaviruses bind to ACE2. However, some authors interpret this as suggesting nicotine is likely to be harmful in the context of COVID-19, and others suggest the opposite.

It is extremely difficult to synthesise evidence on nicotine and COVID-19 as much of the literature is inconsistent. Below we highlight pathways/hypothetical mechanisms through which at least one paper has speculated nicotine might impact SARS-Cov-2:

• Current and past tobacco smoking are associated with changes in ACE2 receptor expression
• Nicotine up-regulates the ACE/angiotensin (ANG)-II/ANG II type 1 receptor axis, and down-regulates the compensatory ACE2/ANG-(1–7)/Mas receptor axis (commentary; commentary)
• Nicotine may bind with the ACE2 receptor, particularly in people with COVID-19, and thus could interfere with further SARS-CoV-2-ACE2 binding (pre-print in silico study)
• Nicotine and cigarette smoke decrease levels of ACE2 in multiple organs
• Cytokine storms could be prevented or suppressed by nicotine through its impact on the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system; nicotine may inhibit hyperinflammation and platelet reactivity
• Poor COVID-19 outcomes in people who smoke could be driven by nicotine withdrawal when acutely ill, thus nicotine patches “should be urgently considered and discussed” (note, nicotine patch use in hospital is a common approach across conditions)

France has had to place restrictions on sales of nicotine replacement therapy because of fears it may start to be stockpiled for inappropriate use relating to COVID-19. Studies are underway testing nicotine replacement therapy in COVID-19 patients, and until results are available from those, there is no evidence to support the general public’s use of nicotine replacement therapy for COVID-19 infection. Nicotine replacement therapy is a mainstay of smoking cessation treatment and is safe and effective in this capacity.

CONCLUSIONS

• There are biologically plausible pathways through which nicotine may impact SARS-CoV-2, but the clinical significance of these is entirely unclear
• Early studies are underway regarding the role of nicotine replacement therapy as a therapeutic aid for COVID-19
• Evidence so far is too limited to inform any decisions about use of nicotine replacement therapy in COVID-19
• When used for smoking cessation, there is high certainty evidence that nicotine replacement therapy is safe and effective.

End.

Disclaimer: the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement and the sources cited should be checked. The views expressed in this commentary represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the host institution, the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice.

 

[ainitfunny]

Here is an excerpt from an Italian study of smoking and covid19: Current smoking is not associated with COVID-19

At the University-Hospital of Padova, located in the Veneto Region, one of the areas in Italy most affected by COVID-19, between 15 March and 10 April, 2020, 132 patients were assessed in our clinic for SARS-CoV-2 related pneumonia. The analysis of patients' smoking history showed that no-one was a current smoker, with 112 patients (84.8%) who had never smoked and 20 (15.2%) who were former smokers. These data are in agreement with those from China [3–6]. Furthermore, there was no difference in the disease severity between patients who never smoked and former smokers. These data are even more striking if we consider that the percentage of current smokers in Italy and in the Veneto Region is 25.7% and 22.7%, respectively (www.epicentro.iss.it/passi/dati/fumo).

Thus, the conclusions of Leung et al. [1] to consider cigarette smoking as a severe risk factor for COVID-19 pneumonia are in contrast with the strong and consolidated epidemiological data coming from China [3–6] that have been confirmed also in our patients.

 

[Michiana MaJo]

It’s ironic to see someone promoting a booklet about God’s Way of Salvation is defending smoking........I thought God doesn’t approve of the evil weed. OK, slap me silly to open my big mouth!

 

[CapeCMom]

It’s totally true about nicotine being anti inflammatory. Any time I have tried to quit my UC goes into a horrible flare. My gastroenterologist doesn’t bother me about smoking. He acknowledges it helps me.I have switched over to organic cigarettes at least. It’s an awful habit but after 20 years you do what you have to.

 

[Catnip]

Interesting Article. Funny how an article discussing the low rate of hospitalization and covid cases among smokers ends with "There's never been a better time to quit smoking," the FDA said.

I read years ago that nicotine and/or the smoke (don't remember which) lines smokers' lungs and protects them from some lung ailments. I was a smoker for many years and never got sick.

 

[bassgirl]

They should of included vapes. Because if it is nicotine then it should should show up in both.

OR is it the smoke killing off any virus? If so the vapes would not help against It.

 

[Catnip]

It’s ironic to see someone promoting a booklet about God’s Way of Salvation is defending smoking........I thought God doesn’t approve of the evil weed. OK, slap me silly to open my big mouth!

As souls, we take on bodies and come to earth in order to learn lessons we aren't able to learn in the spiritual realms. God does not judge what we do here, otherwise why would He create this schoolhouse for us? Think about that.

 

[Stanb999]

Smoking causes excess phlegm. Virus, bacteria, and other things gets caught in the phlegm. So the smoker coughs. This expels things from the lungs. Seems pretty easy to understand. But smoking is horrible because it doubles your chances of getting other disease... They just never state what your chance of disease actually was.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Or, using KISS, smokers get symptomatic cases of the China virus less often because smoking tobacco regularly has already killed off the weakest ones? (This is aside from how everyone who smokes gets damaged by it and has weaker health than they would have had smoke-free.)

 

[Firebird]

My dad was a smoker, and he literally NEVER got sick, there is something to this.

 

[SmithJ]

Not even Covids want to be near a smoker!

 

[SmithJ]

Or, “Hey smoker, some COVIDs stopped by to see you but you were out back on a smoke break and John had to handle it for you!”

(more likely this)

 

[abby normal]

It’s totally true about nicotine being anti inflammatory. Any time I have tried to quit my UC goes into a horrible flare. My gastroenterologist doesn’t bother me about smoking. He acknowledges it helps me.I have switched over to organic cigarettes at least. It’s an awful habit but after 20 years you do what you have to.

This happened to me as well. I thought it was just taking my system an extra long time to detox but after a couple months I still felt like crap. My digestion was a horrible mess no matter what I did.

Started back up on organic cigs, only 8 or 9 a day which was much less than my previous pack and a half habit. 3 years now and I still just smoke a few. No more issues.
I have read that tobacco has helpful qualities for mind and body when used in moderation. Of course they keep that info supressed

 

[Michiana MaJo]

I just hope this thread doesn’t tempt anyone to start smoking! How about the increasing numbers of devastating lung cancer we know it causes, or emphysema. Working in a nursing home for many years, I saw too many patients gasping for breath, needing O2 after years of smoking!

 

[ainitfunny]

It’s ironic to see someone promoting a booklet about God’s Way of Salvation is defending smoking........I thought God doesn’t approve of the evil weed. OK, slap me silly to open my big mouth!

God created everything good, for it’s purpose.
It was only relatively recently that smoking has been condemned.
when I was a kid practically EVERYONE smoked including Doctors, nurses, and Christians, unless they were in a very strict church that had a Law rather than Grace focused litany of “church rules” forbidding this or that.
All things are lawful to me but some thing are not helpful.

I’ve smoked since 15, 61 years.
The last time I got sick, really sick, was when I was an inmate of a nursing home for Rehab after back surgery, last year and forbidden and prevented from smoking for months, I got an upper respiratory infection (from a sick RN ) that Illness came near to killing me with mucous that could not be coughed up, it was SO THICK. But they refused my requests for MUCINEX! I called my RN daughter who said I’ll have Joanne bring you PINEAPPLE JUICE, IT WILL IMMEDIATELY THIN AND BREAK UP THE MUCOUS! REMEMBER THAT SIMPLE REMEDY FOR MUCOUS! Have some canned pineapple juice and BROMELAINE CAPSULES ( the ingredient in the juice that breaks up mucous) stocked up for COVID 19, which also chokes patients with mucous so thick that it cannot be coughed up!
She did, And it DID, IMMEDIATELY! (Overnight) after drinking only two small cans of pineapple juice the night before! I had fears of suffocating had she not solved my problem!

 

[Sacajawea]

Us gardeners have heard the old organic pest-killer was tobacco juice... apparently it may at least slow down the other kinds of bugs, too.

 

[hunybee]

Nicotine as Therapy

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

PLoS Biol. 2004 Nov; 2(11): e404.
Published online 2004 Nov 16. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020404
PMCID: PMC526783
PMID: 15547644
Nicotine as Therapy
Tabitha M Powledge
Copyright and License information Disclaimer


This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

There's a cheap, common, and mostly safe drug, in daily use for centuries by hundreds of millions of people, that only lately has been investigated for its therapeutic potential for a long list of common ills. The list includes Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and even pain and obesity. Why has interest in this potential cure-all been slow to develop? One reason: in its current forms the drug offers pharmaceutical companies no possibility of substantial profit. Another, perhaps more important: the drug is reviled as the world's most addictive. The drug, of course, is nicotine.
Nicotine is an alkaloid in the tobacco plant Nicotiana tabacum, which was smoked or chewed in the Americas for thousands of years before European invaders also succumbed to its pleasures and shipped it back to the Old World. Nicotine has always been regarded as medicinal and enjoyable at its usual low doses. Native Americans chewed tobacco to treat intestinal symptoms, and in 1560, Jean Nicot de Villemain sent tobacco seeds to the French court, claiming tobacco had medicinal properties and describing it as a panacea for many ailments. Higher doses are toxic, even lethal—which is why nicotine is used around the world as an insecticide. Yet few of the horrendous health effects of smoking are traceable to nicotine itself—cigarettes contain nearly 4,000 other compounds that play a role. Until recently, nicotine research has been driven primarily by nicotine's unparalleled power to keep people smoking, rather than its potential therapeutic uses.
Nicotine locks on to one group of receptors that are normally targeted by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are ion channels threaded through cell membranes. When activated, either by acetylcholine or by nicotine, they allow selected ions to flow across the cell membrane. In vertebrates nAChRs are all over the autonomic and central nervous sytems and the neuromuscular junction. A nAChR is composed of five polypeptide subunits (Figure 1), but there are many nAChR subtypes made of different subunit combinations, a diversity that helps explain why nicotine can have so many different physiological and cognitive effects.

Figure 1
Schematic Illustration of an Acetylcholine Receptor (Illustration: Giovanni Maki)
It is now conventional wisdom that acetylcholine and nicotine act at these receptors to alter electrochemical properties at a variety of synapses, which can in turn affect the release of several other neurotransmitters. This wisdom exists thanks in part to work by Lorna Role and her colleagues at Columbia University in New York City. “In 1995, we turned people's attention to how nicotine works as a modulator, tuning synapses and increasing the gain on transmitter release,” Role recalls. Although all nAChRs are activated by nicotine, other drugs could be found or designed that affect only a subset of these receptor types. “If you can dissect out the important players with respect to which nicotine receptors are tuning [a] particular set of synapses, then that provides another way to potentially target the therapeutics.”
Go to:
Nicotine and the Brain
People with depressive-spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and adult ADHD tend to smoke heavily, which suggested to researchers that nicotine may soothe their symptoms. Common to all these disorders is a failure of attention, an inability to concentrate on particular stimuli and screen out the rest. Nicotine helps. Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse have shown via functional magnetic resonance imaging that nicotine activates specific brain areas during tasks that demand attention (Box 1). This may be because of its effects, shared with many other addictive drugs, on the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. “Schizophrenia is a disorder largely of the dopamine system,” says John Dani of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dopamine signals in the brain occur in two modes—a kind of background trickle, punctuated by brief bursts. “It's thought that schizophrenics have a hard time separating that background information from important bursts. We've shown that nicotine helps to normalize that signaling by depressing the background but letting the bursts through well,” he says. “I'll be surprised if there's not a co-therapy [to help schizophrenics] that takes advantage of nicotine systems in less than a decade.”
Box 1. Nicotine's Effect on Attention
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse provided the first evidence that nicotine-induced enhancement of parietal cortex activation is associated with improved attention. They compared brain activity during a task demanding sustained attention—rapid visual information processing (RVIP)—with that during an undemanding sensorimotor control task (Figure 2). Group results from 15 smokers (right) illustrate the effects of nicotine and placebo patches in left and right parietal cortex (1 and 2) and left and right occipital cortex (3 and 4). Nicotine significantly increased activation in occipital cortex during both the control and rapid visual information processing tasks, suggesting a general modulation of attention. In contrast, nicotine increased activity in the parietal cortex only during rapid visual information processing, suggesting a specific modulation on task performance.

Figure 2
The Brain on Nicotine (Image: Elliot Stein, National Institute on Drug Abuse)
Nicotine may be the link between two genes that appear to figure in schizophrenia. Sherry Leonard and Robert Freedman of the University of Colorado in Denver, Colorado, have shown that expression of the gene for the alpha 7 neuronal nicotinic receptor is reduced in schizophrenics, and have argued that alpha 7 abnormalities lead to attention problems. Researchers in Iceland and elsewhere have shown that a different gene, for the growth factor neuregulin, also appears to figure in the disease. Neuregulin, Role and her colleagues have shown, governs the expression of nAChRs in neurons and helps to stabilize the synapses where they are found. The researchers are currently studying interactions between neuregulin and alpha 7, which Role thinks will prove important.
Smokers also have lower rates of neurodegenerative disorders, and nicotine improves cognitive and motor functioning in people with Alzheimer disease and Parkinson disease. The prevailing hypothesis is that nicotine increases release of neurotransmitters depleted in those diseases. Dani and his colleagues have recently shown that acetylcholinesterase inhibitors—which block the degradation of acetylcholine and hence prolong its action—used to treat Alzheimer disease also stimulate dopamine release. They suspect that malfunctioning of the dopamine system may be affecting noncognitive aspects of dementia such as depressed mood, and that this might be alleviated by nicotine.
Paul Newhouse and his colleagues at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont, are studying nicotine drugs as potential therapeutic agents for cognitive dysfunction. Newhouse, a long-time nicotine researcher, is heading the first study ever to examine the efficacy and safety of nicotine patches for treating mild cognitive impairment, thought to be a precursor of Alzheimer disease. The researchers hope to see a positive effect on attention and learning. Newhouse also heads two studies of nicotinic stimulation in ADHD, using the patch, nicotine blockers, and some novel drugs that activate nicotine receptors.
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Nicotine and Pain
Nicotine's salutary effects in patients with neurodegenerative and mental disorders have been studied a lot and are fairly well known. Two much newer topics of academic research are nicotine's potential for pain relief and for treating obesity.Nicotine itself has provided modest pain relief in animal studies. Although the analgesic effect of drugs that mimic acetylcholine were originally attributed to a different class of receptors, it is now clear that nAChRs play an important role in the control of pain. For instance, epibatidine, a drug that is extracted from the skin of an Ecuadorian frog and that acts at nAChRs, has been shown to be 200 times more potent than morphine at blocking pain in animals. Current animal research is aimed at discovering just where, how, and which classes of nAChRs work against pain, with the aim of developing more selective drugs.
Meanwhile, nicotine is also being investigated as an analgesic in humans. For example, Pamela Flood, an anesthesiologist at Columbia, is investigating nicotine's future as a postoperative analgesic. She recently completed a pilot study of 20 women undergoing gynecological surgery. All the women had access to unlimited morphine and also got either a single 3-mg dose of nicotine nasal spray or a placebo. The placebo group had peak pain scores of eight out of a possible ten in the first hour after surgery. Women who got nicotine averaged a pain score of five. Despite the small sample size, Flood says, the results were highly significant. “As far as I know this is the first clinical study to use nicotine for analgesia, and it was much more successful than I ever would have imagined.”
“The nice thing about nicotine and drugs like nicotine is that they have opposite side effects to anesthetics. Instead of being respiratory depressants, they are respiratory stimulants. Instead of being sedating, they increase alertness. So theoretically this class of drugs is actually the perfect thing to add to an opioid regimen. The fact that they're synergistic was a fortuitous thing that we had never looked at, and neither had anybody else.”
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Nicotine and Weight Gain
Nicotine may be the most effective drug around for weight control. As ex-smokers know, to their rue, one of the worst things about quitting cigarettes is putting on pounds—as much as 10% of body weight. “Something about being addicted to nicotine and then going off it causes massive increase in weight,” Role points out.
Young-Hwan Jo in Role's lab is looking at a particular brain circuit involved in motivational behavior, especially feeding behavior. It is lodged primarily in the lateral hypothalamus but has projections all over the cortex, especially the nucleus accumbens, which is the center of reinforcement. “This is where information that has come in to the thalamus and the hypothalamus is relayed to cortical areas with some sense of salience or remembrance. It presumably is involved in changing perception and motivation for eating. It's not, ‘I have to eat this,’ it's, ‘I want to eat this,’” says Role.
Jo has been comparing the synaptic effects of nicotine, which reduces appetite, to those of cannabinoids, which stimulate it. “Control of these projection neurons seems to be oppositely regulated by these two,” Role notes. “It doesn't necessarily mean we've found the root of the munchies, but it at least points to pathways that these things have in common.” Jo is also examining how nicotine and cannabinoids modulate these pathways in genetically obese mice, and also their interactions with leptins. Role says tuning these pathways up or down might be a reasonable aim. “If that could be done in a selective fashion, maybe that could be introduced in appetite control. Certainly I see…antagonism of some of these pathways that nicotine activates or the complementary activation of the cannabinoid pathways as very important targets for therapeutics with respect to the anorexia that's associated with chemotherapy.”
Ming Li and his colleagues at the University of Texas in San Antonio, Texas, are studying nicotine's effects on weight and on expression of genes that nicotine upregulates orexin and neuropeptide Y and, more recently, that it also regulates leptin signaling. All three molecules regulate feeding behavior controlled by the hypothalamus. In the weight study, nicotine-treated rats not only lost weight, they lost about 20% of their body fat compared to saline-treated controls. The researchers suggest that, among its other effects, nicotine alters fat storage.
The University of Texas researchers have scoured the literature for genes related to nicotine, and they are developing microarrays to study the expression of these genes (Figure 3). While nicotine seems to affect all the molecules known to influence weight, Li says it's clear the story is even more complex. “That's the reason we keep looking at different molecules, to find key targets involved in this regulation.” The ultimate hope is to develop new drug applications.


continued....

 

[hunybee]

....continued...



Figure 3
Microarray Showing Patterns of Gene Expression Influenced by Nicotine
(Image: Ming Li, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio)
Dani predicts that weight control is likely to be one of the earliest nicotine-based therapies. “There's a very good chance that the first drug is unlikely to be…nicotine itself, but will take advantage of nicotinic receptors in the therapy,” he says. “I know there are drugs now being tested by drug companies just for that purpose.”
Go to:
Nicotine's Future
Developing new drugs that selectively target specific subtypes of nicotine receptors is an expensive, albeit potentially lucrative, proposition. And therein lies a question. Will nicotine-based therapy consist mostly of costly new drugs from the pharmaceutical industry? Or can less expensive nicotine products like the patch, chewing gum, and nasal spray—which are generally intended for smoking cessation but widely available, usually without prescription—find their way into the world's medicine cabinets?
“It's a little early to call whether nicotine will be used itself as a therapeutic agent or whether these more specific drugs that are being produced or maybe even used in combination with other drugs may be the most important way to go,” says Dani. But he doesn't see the medicinal use of plain nicotine as very likely. Dani points out that the body's own agent, acetylcholine, acts over milliseconds to activate nicotinic receptors, whereas nicotine itself stimulates these receptors for hours. That lengthy action means that, although nicotine activates the receptors, it then often turns particular receptor subtypes off again, a process called desensitization. “It's hard to predict inside of a body what you're getting. Am I getting an activation or am I turning the receptors off?”
Yet much of the work to date showing nicotine's effectiveness on a huge range of disorders has involved products available at any drugstore and intended to help people quit smoking. Newhouse is using patches for mild cognitive impairment. Flood has demonstrated pain relief with nasal spray and will use patches in her next study. And Role feels that gum hasn't been adequately explored for its therapeutic potential. Nicotine gum, she notes, is a better imitator of smoking than the patch because it delivers brief hits rather than a steady supply. She's also uncertain whether natural nicotine has been studied enough. But Role also points out that nicotine has its serious problems—addictive potential, cardiovascular damage, and (especially when delivered through the mucosa) cancer.
Dani says, “People are probably going to have to find creative ways to understand which subtypes of nicotinic receptors they're turning on and which ones they're desensitizing. Maybe drug delivery methods will matter. Maybe subtype specificity will matter. It's less than a decade that we've known how important nicotinic receptors are. Now we have to move forward from there.”
“We've made an enormous amount of progress on understanding the biology of these receptor systems and how to target them. What has been trickier has been to develop an appropriate pharmacology that allows one to selectively target agents for particular therapeutic purposes with an adequate safety index,” Newhouse says. “But some of the drugs that are coming on in human trials now are very promising. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we're on the road to developing some useful nicotinic therapies.”
Go to:
Abbreviations

ADHD	attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
nAChR	nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Go to:
Footnotes

Tabitha M. Powledge is a freelance science writer who specializes in neuroscience, genomics, and science policy. E-mail: gro.wsan@mat

Go to:
Further Reading

• Flood P, Sonner JM, Gong D, Coates KM. Isoflurane hyperalgesia is modulated by nicotinic inhibition. Anesthesiology. 2002;97:192–198. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• Freedman R, Adams CE, Adler LE, Bickford PC, Gault J, et al. Inhibitory neurophysiological deficit as a phenotype for genetic investigation of schizophrenia. Am J Med Genet. 2000;97:58–64. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• Li MD, Kane JK. Effect of nicotine on the expression of leptin and forebrain leptin receptors in the rat. Brain Res. 2003;991:222–231. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• McGehee DS, Heath MJ, Gelber S, Devay P, Role LW. Nicotine enhancement of fast excitatory synaptic transmission in CNS by presynaptic receptors. Science. 1995;269:1692–1696. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• Newhouse PA, Potter A, Singh A. Effects of nicotinic stimulation on cognitive performance. Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2004;4:36–46. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• Yang X, Kuo Y, Devay P, Yu C, Role L. A cysteine-rich isoform of neuregulin controls the level of expression of neuronal nicotinic receptor channels during synaptogenesis. Neuron. 1998;20:255–270. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• Zhang L, Zhou FM, Dani JA. Cholinergic drugs for Alzheimer's disease enhance in vitro dopamine release. Mol Pharmacol. 2004;66:538–544. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from PLoS Biology are provided here courtesy of Public Library of Science

 

[hunybee]

Lung innervation in the eye of a cytokine storm: neuroimmune interactions and COVID-19 - Nature Reviews Neurology

Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a common occurrence in COVID-19, an infectious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In this article, the authors consider how lung innervation might crosstalk with the immune system to modulate lung function and influence outcomes in COVID-19.

www.nature.com

Lung innervation in the eye of a cytokine storm: neuroimmune interactions and COVID-19



i cannot get the article to copy over! maybe it is the format they are using. if anyone is able to get it over here, i would appreciate it!

 

[Michiana MaJo]

I’m sure a lot, here, could quote health officials on the well known harmful effects of smoking.....sure, there are exceptions to the story, and let us be thankful for knowing some. As a nurse, I saw the other side, as well as having a family member (DIL), a long time smoker, slowly die of lung cancer.

Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in smoking.....I’m familiar with many of them, and as a group, seem to be healthier than average, thanks to not smoking and a healthful diet that is promoted.

 

[ainitfunny]

Well, looking back, I am surprised I took up smoking.
The doctors told my parents when I was 7, I believe, that I had such bad lungs that I might not make it
if I got pneumonia again “this winter” he said. It scared them so bad that my dad went out and bought me and my sister warm “boys clothes” that were night and day better, warmer than the “girls clothes” meant to make little girls pretty, without considering their comfort or health. IN MICHIGAN FARM WINTERS, IT MATTERED.
I had suffered SEVEN bouts of pneumonia by the time I was seven, but never again had it as a child.

My sister, a year younger, died last winter (2018) with the regular flu, she got Blood poisoning (septic) with an infection. They said it was a complication of the flu. She didn’t get a flu shot but her DH did and he got flu, but got over it quick.She smoked 60 years too.

 

[hunybee]

I’m sure a lot, here, could quote health officials on the well known harmful effects of smoking.....sure, there are exceptions to the story, and let us be thankful for knowing some. As a nurse, I saw the other side, as well as having a family member (DIL), a long time smoker, slowly die of lung cancer.

Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in smoking.....I’m familiar with many of them, and as a group, seem to be healthier than average, thanks to not smoking and a healthful diet that is promoted.

i am NOT picking on you, but as a nurse, you have to know the medical application of just nicotine alone in the world of medicine. it does have many uses.

 

[Faroe]

Not a smoker, and my pack-a-day mother died early of emphysema. Still, I grew up with the rabid No Smoking! cultural hype all around me in the 70's and 80's, and the smug holier-than-thou directives made me suspicious. I have no use for people who litter the ground with butts, or sit next to me and proceed to light up, but the control freaks were never concerned about that. As with any current cause, the Karens are terribly concerned with YOU!

Ok, rant over. What I find interesting here is that smoking meat preserves it by killing off surface bacteria. Might that also kill off viruses, or at least alter the chemistry of the surface in a way that is not conducive to a virus colonizing those surface cells in a smoker's living lung tissue?

Also, as an aside, first I've heard about nicotine and anti-inflammatory qualities. Could be. GI issues run in my maternal line, and my mother had them too. She basically lived on coffee and cigarettes. She quit after the emphysema diagnosis, but took it up again not long before she died. My brother (a LIBERAL) highly disapproved (Oh, F**k you! ).
She already had a terminal illness, why not be a little more comfortable? I hate do-gooders.

 

[hunybee]

the bigger issues how are the conventional cigarettes made?

why are they made this way?

how are they different than organic?

what research is used to make determinations about the health impacts?

who performed the research?

when was this research done?

who has been declared as an expert?

what is the basis of this title?

lots more questions about the research and declared data and results.


there are lots of things that are forbidden and are said to be evil and immoral, but they are not. the use of religion or morals to tell people that a certain things is wrong to use is a long standing "tradition".

so many times, it comes back to "follow the money". who does it benefit and how?


i am not naive. of course there are people that misuse things. that has always been and will always be. the ones that do are not all.

 

[Faroe]

I've posted before that about fifteen years ago, I almost died of the flu. Worst thing by far I've ever been through. Made me a germ-phobic. Never want to drown in my own mucus filled lungs again. Was in excellent health and fitness at the time it happened.

If I ever get the flu again, I'll ask someone to get me some organic cigarettes. (Possible prep item? How do they keep in long term storage?)

 

[hunybee]

Not a smoker, and my pack-a-day mother died early of emphysema. Still, I grew up with the rabid No Smoking! cultural hype all around me in the 70's and 80's, and the smug holier-than-thou directives made me suspicious. I have no use for people who litter the ground with butts, or sit next to me and proceed to light up, but the control freaks were never concerned about that. As with any current cause, the Karens are terribly concerned with YOU!

Ok, rant over. What I find interesting here is that smoking meat preserves it by killing off surface bacteria. Might that also kill off viruses, or at least alter the chemistry of the surface in a way that is not conducive to a virus colonizing those surface cells in a smoker's living lung tissue?

Also, as an aside, first I've heard about nicotine and anti-inflammatory qualities. Could be. GI issues run in my maternal line, and my mother had them too. She basically lived on coffee and cigarettes. She quit after the emphysema diagnosis, but took it up again not long before she died. My brother (a LIBERAL) highly disapproved (Oh, F**k you! ).
She already had a terminal illness, why not be a little more comfortable? I hate do-gooders.

i agree with the karen culture and pretty much everything else you just said.

 

[Looks Harmless]

As souls, we take on bodies and come to earth in order to learn lessons we aren't able to learn in the spiritual realms. God does not judge what we do here, otherwise why would He create this schoolhouse for us? Think about that.

All we need do is reject evil... the Creator's love is unfathomable.

Somewhere out in the ether is a study that talks of tobacco and the Spanish Flu and its preventative effects. Which is why troops were give so much tobacco.
There is also a paper written by one of the original scientists on the big bad tobacco study who admits and shows that smoking, at the time, before all the filter and additives, only increased ones risk of cancer by maybe around 1%.
Why would the TPTB need a cancer fall guy? I can think of several reasons...

 

[hunybee]

I've posted before that about fifteen years ago, I almost died of the flu. Worst thing by far I've ever been through. Made me a germ-phobic. Never want to drown in my own mucus filled lungs again. Was in excellent health and fitness at the time it happened.

If I ever get the flu again, I'll ask someone to get me some organic cigarettes.

i have had a few bouts with different very nasty strains of flu. not sure how i got so lucky LOL. but i am in the same boat you are. i do not want it again!!

 

[ainitfunny]

I've posted before that about fifteen years ago, I almost died of the flu. Worst thing by far I've ever been through. Made me a germ-phobic. Never want to drown in my own mucus filled lungs again. Was in excellent health and fitness at the time it happened.

If I ever get the flu again, I'll ask someone to get me some organic cigarettes. (Possible prep item? How do they keep in long term storage?)

Better you ask someone To get you a couple six packs of canned pineapple juice!
Cigarettes won’t help mucous get thinner, easy to cough up.
Cigarettes only seem to help you not catch Covid 19 in the first place, if you are a CURRENT smoker.
Smokers, when forbidden to smoke after hospitalization, GET SICKER.

 

[ainitfunny]

As souls, we take on bodies and come to earth in order to learn lessons we aren't able to learn in the spiritual realms. God does not judge what we do here, otherwise why would He create this schoolhouse for us? Think about that.

That contradicts everything in God’s Word, the Bible.

 

[coloradohermit]

For years I jokingly said that, as a long time smoker, a germ wouldn't stand a chance in my chest. I'm 70, have smoked for 57 years, and I never get sick. I will die of something someday regardless. Got the t-shirt "Everything will kill you, so choose something fun."

 

[Faroe]

Better you ask someone To get you a couple six packs of canned pineapple juice!
Cigarettes won’t help mucous get thinner, easy to cough up.
Cigarettes only seem to help you not catch Covid 19 in the first place, if you are a CURRENT smoker.
Smokers, when forbidden to smoke after hospitalization, GET SICKER.

Will get the pineapple juice.

Still, I knew I was getting sick a couple days before. Exhausted, and my bones ached. It is a specific warning I've had a couple of times. That early stage might be a good time to take adv. of the possible curative smoke of the tobacco, and the anti-inflammatory properties of the nicotine. Speculation, but IMHO a day or two of smoking at that crucial point in Covid or the flu's progression isn't going to hurt, and could be life-saving. (If I end up in a hospital, it will be because I was unconscious, and unable to object. Zero trust in doctors.)

 

[Looks Harmless]

That contradicts everything in God’s Word, the Bible.

That the Creator is a wrathful, vengeful, authoritarian? Yeah, it does, doesn't it. Interesting that.
Prefer to go directly to the source, personally.

 

[Blacknarwhal]

But they refused my requests for MUCINEX! I called my RN daughter who said I’ll have Joanne bring you PINEAPPLE JUICE, IT WILL IMMEDIATELY THIN AND BREAK UP THE MUCOUS! REMEMBER THAT SIMPLE REMEDY FOR MUCOUS! Have some stocked up for COVID 19, which also chokes patients with mucous so thick that it cannot be coughed up!
She did, And it DID, IMMEDIATELY! (Overnight) after drinking only two small cans of pineapple juice the night before! I had fears of suffocating had she not solved my problem!

I'll back this one personally. Already have, actually; just had one wicked chest cold. No fever or loss of smell / taste, just a whole lot of mucus focused around the chest. Couldn't even drink anything cold for the first three days because it'd contract the chest.

Started in with pineapple and juice, and I was feeling better within four days. I'm now mostly patched up, and it's been just 10 days total. I put a huge dent in my supply in the meantime, so I'm hopeful that my trip to the store later today will let me resupply.

 

[hunybee]

Better you ask someone To get you a couple six packs of canned pineapple juice!
Cigarettes won’t help mucous get thinner, easy to cough up.
Cigarettes only seem to help you not catch Covid 19 in the first place, if you are a CURRENT smoker.
Smokers, when forbidden to smoke after hospitalization, GET SICKER.

that may not be true. go look at the two studies i posted.

 

[fairywell]

Genes. Some have good genes some don't. Some people smoke for a lifetime and live forever, others smoke for a few years and die young from lung cancer or endure COPD or emphysema, and so on. To smoke or not to smoke, personal choice. There are nonsmokers that die of COPD and lung cancer. Too much contradictory evidence and studies and stats and so on to convince me of anything that the health experts suggest or "know". Too many theories. . Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Could be in 5 years smoking makes a comeback based on new studies. Who knows, there is good and bad in everything, especially according to the article. As with wearing a mask for protection from COVID, choose your own risk, and accept the consequences.