Do Smokers Have Immunity Against COVID-19? David Hockney Thinks So
At 82, David Hockney is likely the most famous living artist — at least the most famous living LGBTQ one. He also seems to be an unlikely source for COVID-19 information. But this week he posted an Onion-sounding theory that has been echoed by some scientists, writes Daily Mail Senior Health Reporter Sam Blanchard.
In a letter to the Daily Mail Hockney wondered if smokers have some immunity to COVID-19.
"Could it not be that smokers have developed an immune system to this virus? With all these figures coming out, it's beginning to look like that to me."
"I've smoked for more than 60 years, but I think I'm quite healthy," Hockney wrote. "How much longer do I have? I'm going to die of either a smoking-related illness or a non-smoking-related illness."
His question seems bizarre and was roundly dismissed, seemingly counter-intuitive to health experts telling people they should not be smoking, especially with a deadly lung ailment running rampant.
"The World Health Organization writes that smokers are in fact more likely to be vulnerable to COVID-19," reports the Observer, "due to the fact that potentially contaminated fingers and cigarettes are coming into frequent contact with a person's open mouth when they smoke. 'Smokers may also already have lung disease or reduced lung capacity, which would greatly increase risk of serious illness,' WHO continues."
The Observer also observes that it is "possible Hockney swiped his theory from rumors that nicotine has the ability to 'downregulate' the enzyme that binds COVID-19 to humans, which has been getting a decent amount of circulation on Twitter. It's a theory that has little to no scientific basis, particularly in the face of the mounting evidence that smoking increases the risk of COVID-19 symptoms growing more severe."
But Professor Francois Balloux, a leading infectious disease expert at University College London, said there is 'bizarrely strong' evidence that there is some truth to Hockney's claims, Blanchard writes.
"And data from multiple Chinese studies shows that COVID-19 hospital patients contained a smaller proportion of smokers than the general population (6.5 percent compared to 26.6 percent), suggesting they were less likely to end up in a hospital.
Another study, by America's Centers for Disease Control of over 7,000 people who tested positive for coronavirus, found that just 1.3 percent of them were smokers - against the 14 percent of all Americans that the CDC says smoke," the Daily Mail's Senior Health Reporter writes.
The study also found that smokers stood no greater chance of ending up in a hospital or an ICU.
Blanchard also cites another recent study that echoes Balloux's claim.
"This preliminary analysis does not support the argument that current smoking is a risk factor for hospitalization for COVID-19. Instead, these consistent observations, which are further emphasized by the low prevalence of current smoking among COVID-19 patients in the US (1.3%), raises the hypothesis that nicotine may have beneficial effects on COVID-19."
The report is by Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos and Dr. Anastasia Barbouni, from the University of West Attica in Athens, and Dr. Raymond Niaura of New York University, has yet to be "reviewed by other scientists and admits that it is based on limited data," writes Blanchard.
Their report "looked at 13 Chinese studies that had registered smoking as a precondition and found that the number of smokers across the whole sample of 5,300 patients was 6.5 percent. An astonishingly small number in a country where half of all men still smoke."
What may cause this is the way ACE-2 receptors, found on cells in the airways and lungs that smokers have more of. While having more of them may seem to be a bad thing, "scientists say they have a protective effect in the lungs and low levels are linked to worse damage from viral infection," Blanchard writes.
They suggest that while the virus causes lung damage by depleting the numbers of those receptors - known as ACE-2 receptors - smoking can increase the number of them, reversing the effect.
"Therefore having more of them would seem to be a bad thing, but scientists say they have a protective effect in the lungs and low levels are linked to worse damage from viral infection."
A report on the French website SudQuest cited similar conclusions by scientists. "We have something very special with tobacco. We have found that the vast majority of serious cases are not smokers, as if (...) tobacco protects against this virus, via nicotine," said the president. from the Jean-Fran�ois Delfraissy Scientific Council. Delfraissy describes himself as a "staunch opposer of tobacco."
'Therefore, higher ACE-2 expression, while seemingly paradoxical, may protect against acute lung injury caused by COVID-19," he writes.
But Blanchard adds this is "a disputed area of science - there are studies which show smoking can both increase and decrease the levels of ACE-2 available on someone's lung cells." And that public health personnel are "adamant that people should not consider the prospect of smoking being protective against the illness, which can be deadly, especially for people who already have health problems."
Public Health England and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have urged people to stop smoking to protect their health.