Scientific Report. While smoking is associated with health risks and increased severity of covid-19, some reports have suggested fewer covid cases among smokers. “We must stress the presence of strong evidence showing that smoking increases the severity of covid-19.
But the mechanism we discovered here is worth further investigation as a potential tool to fight SARS-CoV-2 infections," said Keiji Tanimoto of Hiroshima University’s Research Institute for Radiation Biology and Medicine, one of the authors of the paper.
Cigarette smoke contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that can bind to and activate aryl hydrocarbon receptors (AHRs).