Nicotine has no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection

Fang Zheng; Elena Lian; Gaby Ramirez; Carley McAlister; Shuo Zhou; Wen Zhang; Chunming Liu; Rushika Perera; Chang Guo Zhan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0272941

Nicotine has no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection

Fang Zheng, Elena Lian, Gaby Ramirez, Carley McAlister, Shuo Zhou, Wen Zhang, Chunming Liu, Rushika Perera, Chang Guo Zhan

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2 Scopus citations

Abstract

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a pandemic, one of most important questions was whether people who smoke are at more risk of COVID-19 infection. A number of clinical data have been reported in the literature so far, but controversy exists in the collection and interpretation of the data. Particularly, there is a controversial hypothesis that nicotine might be able to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. In the present study, motivated by the reported controversial clinical data and the controversial hypothesis, we carried out cytotoxicity assays in Vero E6 cells to examine the potential cytoprotective activity of nicotine against SARS-CoV-2 infection and demonstrated for the first time that nicotine had no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection in these cells.

Original language	English
Article number	e0272941
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	17
Issue number	8 August
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272941
State	Published - Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Zheng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding

Funders	Funder number
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)	UL1TR001998

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General

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10.1371/journal.pone.0272941

Cite this

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title = "Nicotine has no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection",

abstract = "When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a pandemic, one of most important questions was whether people who smoke are at more risk of COVID-19 infection. A number of clinical data have been reported in the literature so far, but controversy exists in the collection and interpretation of the data. Particularly, there is a controversial hypothesis that nicotine might be able to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. In the present study, motivated by the reported controversial clinical data and the controversial hypothesis, we carried out cytotoxicity assays in Vero E6 cells to examine the potential cytoprotective activity of nicotine against SARS-CoV-2 infection and demonstrated for the first time that nicotine had no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection in these cells.",

author = "Fang Zheng and Elena Lian and Gaby Ramirez and Carley McAlister and Shuo Zhou and Wen Zhang and Chunming Liu and Rushika Perera and Zhan, {Chang Guo}",

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AU - Zheng, Fang

AU - Lian, Elena

AU - Ramirez, Gaby

AU - McAlister, Carley

AU - Zhou, Shuo

AU - Zhang, Wen

AU - Liu, Chunming

AU - Perera, Rushika

AU - Zhan, Chang Guo

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Zheng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Nicotine has no significant cytoprotective activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

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