Correlation of smoking habit and COVID-19 infection assist prof. Dr. Abbas F. Hlaihel, assist prof Dheyaa Khalf Al-Omer

ABSTRACT

Background: Covid-19 is an acute infection caused by novel corona virus called SARS-Cov2 and is consider a major global health disaster causing millions of infected and dead people all over the world The age, gender and smoking habit is well recognized risk factors for many diseases including respiratory disease Their relation to COVID -10 infection is still controversy a though there is a lot of studies that try to clarify theses relatinship Aim of Study Study of correlation of smoking habit with COVID-19 infection in Thi-Qar province in the south of Iraq and evaluate sex and age in studied group Patients and Methods: Retrospective analytic study of smoking habit in of 325 patients with COVID -19 in thi-Qar province in different centers of isolation prove by PCR testing and or CT findings consist with diagnosis of COVID-19. The control group include 329 healthy persons with PCR negative Result and Discussion: In our study two third of patients with COVID-19 are men [66.5%] this difference can explain by small number of size and social factors that limited the movement of female in community. In our study two third of severe COVID-19 are men [8141] this go with most of studies that showed that the outcomes of illness were worse for men than women. In our study the mean age of COVID-19 patients in 46 which little pit less than mean age reported at early months COVID pandemic but later the mean start to dropping reaching in USA 34 In our study mean age of patients with severe COVID-19 is 53.2439 while for moderate one is 49.0256 and for mild COVID-19 patients is 36.8871 with highly significant P value 0.000. Active smoking seen in 81 [24,6] of control group while seen only in 43 [13.2%] in patients with covid-19 with highly significant value P value 0.0001 In this study most of cases of severe COVID are non smokers 84 and 26 are x-smoker while only 13 are active smoking with highly significant difference P value 0.000.A lot of studies revealed an unexpected low number of current smokers among subjects tested for SARS-CoV-2 infections. The prevalence of current smokers suffering from symptomatic COVID-19 was frequently significantly lower than in the general population. Current smokers were at reduced risk of being tested positive compared to former smokers and never smokers, which might have been caused by different testing frequencies, but were at higher risk for severe symptomatic COVID-19. This low prevalence of current smokers among COVID-19 patients led to the hypothesis that smoking/nicotine uptake might have a preventive effect.