As more Americans anxiously wait their turn to get the COVID-19 vaccine, people are discovering that smokers are one of the priority groups for vaccination.
Some disagree with the guidelines and have expressed their frustrations on social media. But health experts say the reason is clear.
“I could see why people would feel like it would be unfair, but people who have smokers are generally at higher risk of getting sick if they develop COVID-19,” said Dr. Samuel Kim, a breast surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said. .
A study published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine on January 25 found that people who smoke or have smoked in the past are more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than people who have not smoked.
“The finding that smoking is associated with an increased risk for COVID-19 is not surprising,” said co-author of the study, Dr. Joe Zein, a pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said. “Smoking causes structural changes in the airways and impairs the ability of people to get appropriate immune and inflammatory responses (against infections).”
Smokers are also more likely to have other diseases, such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, which further increases their risk of poor outcomes, he added.
The Cleveland Clinic study found that COVID-19 patients who smoked for more than 30 pack years (a figure derived by multiplying the number of packs per day by smoking years) had 2.25 times higher chances of hospitalization and 1.89 times were more likely to die than those who never smoked.
Zein said it is difficult to determine the link between smoking and worse COVID-19 outcomes because electronic medical records can misclassify patients. Instead of exposing a patient as a ‘former smoker’, he is sometimes classified as a ‘never smoker’.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have discovered how smoking exacerbates COVID-19 infections in a smoker’s airways, in a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Stem Cell in November.
The group infected cultures exposed to cigarette smoke and identical cultures that were not exposed and saw between two and three times more infected cells in the smoking cultures.
Should pregnant women get the COVID vaccine ?: Dr. Anthony Fauci sees ‘no red flags’ in safety data
Vaccine root: Only 38% of nursing home workers accept COVID-19 vaccines, new data show
Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for bacterial and viral infections. Zein said smoking is associated with a 2- to 4-fold increased risk of invasive pneumococcal infection. The risk of flu illness and severity is also significantly higher in smokers than non-smokers, and in developing countries, smoking has been associated with an increased risk of tuberculosis.
“When you think of the airways like the high walls that protect a castle, the smoking of cigarettes is like holes in these walls,” said dr. Brigitte Gomperts, a professor of pulmonary medicine and a member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, said. “Smoking reduces the natural defenses and it allows the virus.”
Kim of Northwestern Medicine said some studies have found that smoking can also affect the immune system so that the body cannot clear up an infection as easily as possible. As the COVID-19 infection progresses to serious disease and lung damage, some patients require lung transplants.
“If you look at the lungs,” he said of the extreme COVID-19 cases, “it’s worse than any other lung disease I’ve ever seen.”
Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.
Health and Patient Safety Coverage in USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CDC favors smokers for COVID vaccine. Health experts explain why.