A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications
2020
Changeux, Jean-Pierre | Amoura, Zahir | Rey, Felix A. | Miyara, Makoto
SARS-CoV-2 epidemics raises a considerable issue of public health at the planetary scale. There is a pressing urgency to find treatments based upon currently available scientific knowledge. Therefore, we tentatively propose a hypothesis which hopefully might ultimately help save lives. Based on the current scientific literature and on new epidemiological data which reveal that current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the infection by SARS-CoV-2 [1], we hypothesize that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of Covid-19 infection and might represent a target for the prevention and control of Covid-19 infection.
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