SARS-CoV-2 epidemics raises a considerable issue of public health at the planetary scale. There is a pressing urgency to find treatments based upon currently available scientific knowledge. Therefore, we tentatively propose a hypothesis which hopefully might ultimately help saving lives. Based on the current scientific literature and on new epidemiological data which reveal that current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the infection by SARS-CoV-2 [1], we hypothesize that the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of Covid-19 infection and might represent a target for the prevention and control of Covid-19 infection.
Symptomatic Covid-19 disease (as caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus) is observed in 2.5 percent of infected individuals [2] indicating an individual variability in the clinical presentation. Among the epidemiological and clinical features of Covid-19, the following features are of special interest for understanding the patho-physiolology, namely: (1) in outpatients with favorable outcome : neurological/psychiatric disorders, especially loss of sense of smell which is specific of the disease and (2) in hospitalized older patients with a poor prognosis : systemic hyperinflammatory syndrome with increased levels of circulating cytokines and atypical acute respiratory distress syndrome with loss of neurological control of lung perfusion regulation and hypoxic vasoconstriction [3]. This raises the issue of the basis of inter-individual variability for the susceptibility to infection.
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