A few months ago, researchers found an astonishing correlation between cigarettes and Covid-19: the nicotine it contains could protect against the coronavirus.

A correlation now brushed aside by scientists, who say that tobacco increases the risk of triggering a severe form of the virus.

During the first confinement due to Covid-19, during the months of March and April, studies were carried out on smokers suffering from the virus.

And the results were quite surprising: smoking would protect against the virus, especially thanks to nicotine.

Is it really possible that smoking protects against the coronavirus?

Doctor Jimmy Mohamed deconstructs this belief based on more recent studies, in the program Sans Rendez-Vous on Europe 1. 

"Older studies over the March-April period showed that smokers would be spared Covid-19 and would do less severe forms. This raises a question: should we relay these studies each time? has good and bad studies. In addition, it is very easy to confuse the message that one gives and even more with these extraordinary studies, which go out of the usual. This is exactly the point. same problem as there was with chloroquine. 

It's not a cure but a poison

But since then, other studies have been carried out to find out whether nicotine really helps protect against the coronavirus.

Researchers gave nicotine to non-smokers who had Covid-19 to see if it would protect them.

The results invalidated the experiment.

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It was then that a meta-analysis was launched, that is to say a study of studies.

The research therefore concerned nearly 50 studies, or 32,000 patients, smokers and non-smokers.

Scientists investigated whether or not patients reported a more severe form of the virus while smoking.

And the answer turned out to be positive: there is twice the risk of triggering a severe form of Covid-19 when you smoke.

And for former smokers, there is a 25% more risk of declaring a severe form.

So yes, tobacco, in general, is dangerous and faced with Covid-19, it is just as dangerous.

It is absolutely not a cure.

On the contrary, it is a poison. 

>> Find all of Sans rendez-vous in replay and podcast here

Is there a preventive treatment? 

So far, no molecule has proven its effectiveness.

Lots of tests are underway.

Interferon, the molecule responsible for inflammation, has been tested without success.

The same goes for some families of antidepressants.

We have never put so much money and energy into independent research.

Hope will therefore come from a vaccine.

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And other questions that we ask ourselves every day

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Tobacco kills more than Covid-19

In general, even if tobacco protected against Covid-19, it causes many other diseases, such as lung, throat, breast cancer ... It is difficult to understand, but tobacco kills more than the Covid-19.

And it will continue to kill more since this infection is going to last for a few more months, maybe another year, but we'll be okay with it eventually.

However, tobacco will continue to be a poison for life.

You should not take bad habits now and then pay for them all your life ".