newfangled research from King ’s College London investigated whether there is a link between smoke and COVID-19 severity by analyzing data from a self - reportingZOE COVID Symptom Study app . Earlier , preliminary studies suggestedsmoking may have a protective essence on COVID-19 severity , but many experts had dubiety , and question print persist .
Thenew study , print in the journalThorax , suggests smokers have an increase risk of explicate COVID-19 symptoms and are more likely to attend to hospitals compared to their non - smoking counterparts .
The authors of the study took data from the ZOE COVID app between March 24 and April 23 , 2020 , and assessed the outcomes of 2,401,982 participants that self - report symptoms . Out of the total , 11 percent , were smokers .
Of the participants in the study , a third of them report feel physically unwell during this month - long geological period . However , the smokers were 14 percent more likely to describe the classictriad of COVID-19 symptom – persistent cough , shortness of breath , and feverishness – compare to their non - smoking counterparts .
Furthermore , smokers were also more likely to report extra symptom consociate with a COVID-19 infection . Smokers were 29 percent more likely to account up to five known COVID-19 symptom , and 50 percent more likely to describe more than 10 symptom . The authors of the study allege that take more of the additional COVID-19 symptom , such as red ink of smell , muscle pain , diarrhea , etc suggested smokers know a wider image of symptom than non - smokers and hence had a more severe COVID experience .
" Some study have suggest a protective effect of fume on COVID-19 danger . However , studies in this area can easily be dissemble by biases in sampling , participation , and answer . Our results clearly show that smoker are at increase risk of infection of suffering from a broad range of COVID-19 symptom than non - smokers , " saidDr Mario Falchi , one of the author of the study , in apress release .
Interestingly , those smokers in the subject area who had a substantiate COVID-19 cocksure test were two sentence more likely to attend hospital than their non - smoking counterparts .
“ As rates of COVID-19 stay to rise and the NHS [ UK health service ] edges towards capacity , it ’s important to do all we can to bring down its effects and find ways to abridge hospital admissions . Our psychoanalysis evidence that smoking increases a somebody ’s likeliness to wait on hospital , so stopping smoke is one of the thing we can do to reduce the health consequences of the disease , ” lead authorDr Claire Stevesconcluded .
