France to test nicotine substitutes as treatment for Covid-19

The French scientists’ approach runs counter to mainstream thinking on nicotine: The World Health Organization has said smoking probably increases the risk of complications from Covid-19.

Researchers in France will test whether nicotine could be used to treat Covid-19.

Doctors Jerome Fichet and Julien Nahum work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients at the Centre Cardiologique du Nord private hospital in Saint-Denis near Paris as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues in France, April 22, 2020. (REUTERS)

“It’s an interesting possibility,” Health Minister Olivier Veran on France Inter radio. “We’ll know more soon.”

Doctors at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris observed that few Covid-19 patients hospitalized were smokers. They also speculated that the new virus may involve receptors in the body that respond to nicotine. To investigate whether nicotine might have some protective mechanism, they will conduct clinical tests using patches, including one on health-care workers.

The French scientists’ approach runs counter to mainstream thinking on nicotine: The World Health Organization has said smoking probably increases the risk of complications from Covid-19.

The idea isn’t to get more people addicted to nicotine or smoking, which kills about 70,000 people each year in France.

“There are substitutes to nicotine that can be developed in laboratories that would enable to avoid its addictive effects,” Veran said.

Separately, Veran pointed to a French study of 170 patients with Covid-19 that suggests people develop enough antibodies to have immunity to the virus.