The cigarette, both traditional and electronic, could increase the risk of severe Covid in young and healthy children.
This is suggested by a study conducted at the University of Los Angeles and published in the Journal of Molecular Medicine, one of the first studies to discover that not only tobacco smoke, but also electronic cigarettes, can predispose people to an increase in inflammation and to the future development of severe Covid and persistent cardiovascular complications that can occur after the initial illness, as explained by Theodoros Kelesidis, lead author of the study.
"The key message is that smoking is the worst, but e-cigarettes aren't without risks either," Kelesidis said.
"This has been shown for many lung diseases, but not for Covid. It was a rather interesting and new discovery that the e-cigarette changes the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate".
The researchers examined plasma collected from 45 non-smokers, 30 e-cigarette smokers and 29 regular cigarette smokers, analyzing it to measure the levels of proteins SarsCoV2 needs to replicate.
These proteins are ACE2, furin, Ang II, Ang 1-7, IL-6R, sCD163, L-selectin.
The researchers found that the plasma of healthy young people who smoke tobacco or e-cigarettes has higher levels of furin, sCD163 and L-selectin than non-smokers.
These data suggest that in young smokers there may be increased activity of these proteins in immune cells and surface cells, such as those lining the lungs.