Hoax! Nicotine Was Claimed To Protect The Body From COVID-19 Virus Infection

JAKARTA - The results of a study in France stated that smokers have a small risk of being infected with the Corona COVID-19 virus. From the results of testing nicotine patches on COVID-19 patients in a study, nicotine can provide protection against disease infections.

Chief of Part USAID Health Financing Activity (HFA) Professor Hasbullah Thabrany, said nicotine could not be claimed or believed to protect the body from infection or exposure to the COVID-19 virus. According to him, more research is needed to find these results can be validated.

"If you want to do research, how many confirmed research results have been published? If it's only one, while thousands of other studies are different, we believe in one. So that's the most important thing. So in terms of medical science, there has never been news of nicotine preventing infection", Hasbullah told VOI, Tuesday, July 27.

He asserted, thousands and even millions of studies have confirmed worldwide, nicotine causes addiction. Because these compounds cause a reaction to secrete serotonin.

"That is already valid. That there are only one or two studies, it could be a hoax. I can't believe that there are only one or two studies, especially since the methodology has not been tested", he said.

Hasbullah explained, in medical science, the methodology to state that nicotine causes protection against viruses must be tested using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) method.

"What is RCT? If there are two groups, each of which is given material for testing, for example, there are two groups of one thousand people each for nicotine. One is given nicotine, the other is not, both of them are given the virus. Then the one who was given nicotine was not infected. yes, but which one is given nicotine which one is not, it is random, cannot be recognized, cannot be chosen, it is called a blind random trial", he explained.

"If there is a research model, the volume has been tested, so we can trust it", he continued.

However, said Hasbullah, from experience and research around the world, that nicotine can cause protection against viral infections, cannot be trusted. According to him, the concentration of nicotine in the body is very low, let alone smoked.

"But I believe because I have started (try it, red) that nicotine or tobacco can release leeches that stick to my feet. I can prove that the leeches are drunk because of nicotine for sure. It's a 100 percent valid RCT", he said.

In Malang, he continued, the chemistry professor also said that nicotine prevents disease. However, the results of this study could not be validated.

"Well, the chemical process has never been tested on humans. He saw the chemical structure. Yes, if you kill the virus, I don't think you need to go far, just put the virus on a spoon, burn it to death. Now the whole world has not found a cure (COVID-19)", said Hasbullah.

Then, people who have lost their sense of smell can be treated with nicotine. According to Hasbullah, it depends on the cause of the loss of smell.

Because, he said, flu or the common cold can lose the sense of smell because the cells in the nose are covered with mucus so it doesn't enter. Likewise because of stroke or olfactory nerve disorders.

"If the sensory nerve is damaged, it loses its sense of smell. To see what the cause is. Medically logical thinking. Just like we want to see if salt tastes salty or not, we put it to eat and try it, if it is consistently salty, we say salt tastes salty. It's still salty", said Hasbullah.

Previously, the results of a study in France stated that smokers had a small risk of being infected with the Corona COVID-19 virus. From the results of the nicotine patch test on COVID-19 patients in a study. The results are surprising, nicotine can provide protection against infectious diseases.

Quoted from pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, researchers in Paris showed smokers were less infected with the virus than other people and that nicotine could prevent the virus from entering cells.

Professor of Internal Medicine Zahir Amoura and Neurobiologist Zavier Sanche found in their preliminary study, A nicotinic hypothesis for COVID-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications, in 480 patients.

As a result, of all patients treated for COVID-19, only 5 percent were smokers. "We realized that the smoking rate was very low, about 5 percent of COVID-19 patients. That was the first step", Amoura said.

"The second step, when you figure this out, you try to compare, assess with the general population to see if there is a real difference", explains Amoura, who is also Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the French National Reference Center for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus at Pitie-Salpetriére Hospital.

"And fortunately in France in 2018, we had a study done on 10.000 people in the general population, we saw a very significant difference in general", he continued.