France testing whether nicotine can prevent coronavirus disease

Nicotine could protect people from contracting the coronavirus, according to new research in France, where further trials are planned to test whether the substance could be used to prevent or treat the deadly illness. 

The findings come after researchers at a top Paris hospital examined 343 coronavirus patients along with 139 people infected with the illness with milder symptoms. 

They found that a low number of them smoked, compared to smoking rates of around 35 percent in France's general population.

"Among these patients, only five percent were smokers," said Zahir Amoura, the study's co-author and a professor of internal medicine. 

The research echoed similar findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month that suggested that 12.6 percent of 1,000 people infected in China were smokers. 

That was a much lower figure than the number of regular smokers in China's general population, about 26 precent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

The theory is that nicotine could adhere to cell receptors, therefore blocking the virus from entering cells and spreading in the body, according to renown neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux from France's Pasteur Institut who also co-authored the study.

The researchers are awaiting approval from health authorities in France to carry out further clinical trials. 

They plan to use nicotine patches on health workers at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris -- where the initial research was conducted -- to see if it protects them against contracting the virus. 

They have also applied to use the patches on hospitalised patients to see whether it helps reduce symptoms and also on more serious intensive care patients, Amoura said. 

The researchers are looking into whether nicotine could help to prevent "cytokine storms", a rapid overreaction of the immune system that scientists think could play a key role in fatal COVID-19 cases. 

But with further research needed, experts are not encouraging people to pick up smoking or use nicotine patches as a protective measure against the virus. 

"We must not forget the harmful effects of nicotine," said Jerome Salomon, France's top health official. 

"Those who do not smoke should absolutely not use nicotine substitutes", which cause side effects and addiction, he warned.

Tobacco is the number one killer in France, with an estimated 75,000 deaths per year linked to smoking. 

France is one of the hardest hit countries by the coronavirus in Europe, with more than 21,000 deaths and over 155,000 reported infections. 

Agence France-Presse

Facing 'certain death', boy, 17, with vaping injury gets double lung transplant

A 17-year-old boy whose lungs were irreversibly damaged by vaping received a double-lung transplant at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, a lifesaving measure taken when a patient’s own lungs are diseased or damaged beyond repair and there is no other hope of survival, doctors said Tuesday.

Without the transplant, performed last month, the patient “would have faced certain death,” Dr. Hassan Nemeh, who led the surgical team, said during a news conference at the hospital.

The patient’s lungs were scarred, stiffened, pocked with dead spots and extremely inflamed, he said. On a CT scan before the surgery, the patient’s chest appeared almost empty, as if the lungs had vanished. Normal lungs look dark on imaging because they are full of air; the patient’s were not visible because they were not working. There was no air.

“What I saw in his lungs is like nothing I’ve seen before, and I’ve been doing lung transplants for 20 years,” Nemeh said. He added, “This is an evil I haven’t faced before.”

The patient is recovering well and is up and about now, but still in the hospital. His name is being withheld to protect his privacy, but he and his family wanted to release information about his case in the hope that it might persuade other people to quit vaping or never start, hospital officials said.

A doctor at the briefing read a statement from the family, which said, in part:

“We asked Henry Ford doctors to share that the horrific life-threatening effects of vaping are very real! Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades.

“Within a very short period of time, our lives have been forever changed. He has gone from the typical life of a perfectly healthy 16-year-old athlete — attending high school, hanging out with friends, sailing and playing video games — to waking up intubated and with two new lungs, facing a long and painful recovery process as he struggles to regain his strength and mobility, which has been severely impacted.”

The doctors declined to say what products the patient had been vaping, how long he had been doing it or how often. About 86% of the patients with lung injuries in this outbreak had vaped THC, the chemical in marijuana that makes people high.

The case is the first transplant reported in the nationwide outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries, and it highlights the severity of an illness that, as of Nov. 5, had sickened 2,051 people and killed 40. Researchers have described the lung damage from vaping as chemical burns, similar to the injuries in people who have inhaled toxic fumes in industrial accidents, or in soldiers attacked with mustard gas in World War I.

The patient was first admitted to a different hospital on Sept. 6 with what was thought to be pneumonia. His condition worsened and he was placed on a ventilator on Sept. 12. He continued to deteriorate. On Sept. 17, he was transferred to a second hospital, where he was connected to a machine that delivers oxygen directly to the bloodstream.

His health continued to decline, and in early October, he was transferred to Henry Ford Hospital, where he was put on the waiting list for a lung transplant. A national organization sets the criteria for eligibility, not individual hospitals. Several factors quickly pushed him to the to top of the list, Nemeh said: He was a child, the lung damage was irreversible and he would die without the transplant.


The surgery was performed on Oct. 15. The doctors said they could not reveal any information about the source except to say that the donor had been healthy.

Health officials investigating the outbreak described a major advance last week: Researchers found a “very strong culprit,” a form of vitamin E, in the lungs of patients who had the vaping illness. The substance, vitamin E acetate, is sometimes used by illicit sellers to “cut” or dilute THC and increase profits.

Finding the chemical in the lungs meshed with earlier investigations that had already found it in vaping products.

The vitamin compound is thick and sticky. Precisely how it might damage the lungs is not yet known, and health authorities say it is still possible that other chemicals added to vaping fluids may also contribute to lung disease.

The doctors in Detroit did not say whether vitamin E acetate had been found in the patient’s lungs.

“We’re going to see more of this,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a lung specialist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Northwell Health’s regional director of critical care, who has treated several severe cases of the illness. “We definitely see some patients who have such severe lung damage, we are thinking that some of it might not be completely reversible.”

None of her patients have needed transplants.

In general, lungs for transplantation are difficult to obtain, she said. “A huge number of patients die waiting.”

About 2,500 lung transplants were performed in the United States in 2018, compared with more than 21,000 kidney transplants.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Juul knowingly sold tainted nicotine pods, former executive says

A former top executive of Juul is alleging that the electronic cigarette giant sold at least 1 million contaminated mint-flavored nicotine pods — and refused to recall them when told about the problem in March.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday, Siddharth Breja, who was senior vice president for global finance, claims he was fired March 21 in retaliation for whistleblowing and objecting to the shipment of the contaminated and expired pods and other illegal and unsafe conduct that “has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens.”

Breja detailed a culture of indifference to safety and quality-control issues among top executives at the company and quoted the then-Chief Executive Kevin Burns saying at a meeting in February: “Half our customers are drunk and vaping” and wouldn’t “notice the quality of our pods.”

Burns, who left the company in September, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon strongly disputing the quote. “I never said this, or anything remotely close to this, period,” the statement said. “As CEO, I had the company make huge investments in product quality, and the facts will show this claim is absolutely false and pure fiction.”

The lawsuit was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Ted Kwong, a Juul spokesman, dismissed Breja’s claims as baseless.

“He was terminated in March 2019 because he failed to demonstrate the leadership qualities needed in his role,” Kwong said. “The allegations concerning safety issues with Juul products are equally meritless, and we already investigated the underlying manufacturing issue and determined the product met all applicable specifications.”

This lawsuit is only the latest in a growing series of cases against Juul being filed around the country by school districts and individuals. Earlier this month a federal judicial panel gathered together the far-flung cases before Judge William H. Orrick in the Northern District of California in San Francisco, who will oversee them. The claims typically focus on personal injury for vaping-related illnesses or false marketing. The panel estimated that there are about 50 lawsuits so far.

Breja’s lawsuit did not specify what the contaminant in the nicotine pods was. The allegations detail that the shipment of tainted mint-flavored pods resulted from a series of decisions by Juul that created a huge demand for that flavor.

In November 2018, Juul, under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration, announced it would no longer sell its teen-friendly flavored pods in retail stores, making them available only online. But while Juul moved its dessert flavors off the shelves, it continues to sell menthol and mint in retail stores. Breja alleged that with popular flavors like mango and creme no longer readily accessible, customers began embracing menthol and mint with fervor, so much so that demand outstripped supply.

Breja said in the legal complaint that Burns, whom he characterized as behaving like an autocratic “king,” pressured suppliers to hurriedly come up with more mint-flavored product. Burns, he said, also exhorted employees, saying, “You need to have an IQ of 5 to know that when customers don’t find mango they buy mint.”

In March, Breja said he learned that batches of pods flavored with mint-flavored liquid and nicotine had been contaminated and that 250,000 “Mint Refill Kits,” the equivalent of 1 million pods, had been shipped and were being sold by retailers.

Juul did not recall the pods, Breja said, yet he was told to charge the supplier, Alternative Liquids Inc., $7 million so that Juul could recover from the contaminated batches. The supplier was not reachable for comment.

Breja said he urged Juul’s chief financial officer to issue either a recall or put out product safety warnings. A week later, the complaint says, Breja was fired.

Erika A. Kelton, a lawyer at Phillips and Cohen, a Washington-based firm that represents whistleblowers but is not representing Breja, said that although the allegations are cast as a wrongful termination case, they are likely to get the attention of regulators.

“These contamination allegations are headline-grabbing, and I’d expect both federal and state regulators will investigate because they are of such grave public concern,” she said.

Juul is already under investigation by numerous government offices, among them the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, five state attorneys general and several congressional committees.

They have ordered Juul to turn over reams of internal documents, and the FDA, among others, has complained that the records do not appear complete. Breja’s case may offer a clue to their frustration.

He also claims that after the FDA raided Juul headquarters in October 2018, seeking internal documents, Burns instructed Breja and other executives not to put anything relating to regulatory or safety issues in writing, so that the FDA could not get them in the future.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

San Francisco bans sales, manufacture of e-cigarettes

LOS ANGELES - San Francisco on Tuesday became the first major US city to effectively ban the sale and manufacture of electronic cigarettes, as concerns grow over a sharp rise in vaping among youths.

The city's legislature unanimously approved an ordinance suspending the sale in shops or online of e-cigarette products that lack approval by federal health authorities. No such approvals currently exist.

Backers said the ban was necessary due to the "significant public health consequences" of a "dramatic surge" in e-cigarette use among teenagers.

But the move triggered a swift backlash from critics who say it could drive former smokers back to conventional cigarettes.

US health authorities are alarmed by the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices that enable users to inhale addictive nicotine liquids that are often fruit flavored.

The potential health consequences of vaping, including fears it could stunt adolescent development, remain largely unknown, in part because the practice is so new.

The number of young Americans using e-cigarettes grew by 1.5 million in 2018, with about 3.6 million middle and high school students using vaping products.

San Francisco is home to market-leading e-cigarette maker Juul.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who co-sponsored the ban, said it closed a loophole that the federal U.S. Food and Drug Administration should have tackled long ago.

"E-cigarettes are a product that, by law, are not allowed on the market without FDA review," he said in a statement after the second and final vote to implement the ban.

"For some reason, the FDA has so far refused to follow the law. If the federal government is not going to act, San Francisco will."

'DEADLY CIGARETTES'

The city's mayor London Breed has 10 days to sign the legislation -- which she has said she will do -- with the ban due to take effect seven months later.

"We need to take action to protect the health of San Francisco's youth and prevent the next generation of San Franciscans from becoming addicted to these products," Breed said in a statement Tuesday ahead of the vote.

She added that e-cigarette companies were "targeting our kids in their advertising and getting them hooked on addictive nicotine products."

But critics say the legislation will make it harder for people seeking alternatives to regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes do not contain the cancer-causing products found in tobacco.

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times noted that regular cigarettes were still for sale in San Francisco, arguing that "it's bad public health policy to come down harder on the lesser of two tobacco evils."

Juul said in a statement following the vote that the ban would "drive former adult smokers who successfully switched to vapor products back to deadly cigarettes, deny the opportunity to switch for current adult smokers, and create a thriving black market."

The manufacturer called instead for stricter regulation and enforcement including proof-of-age identification.

'INCREASE RISK'

Traditional "Big Tobacco" companies have increasingly marketed "smoke-free" products like e-cigarettes as far less harmful alternatives to the deadly habit they have long been peddling.

But experts point out that it took decades to determine that smoking tobacco -- which accounts for more than seven million premature deaths worldwide every year -- is truly dangerous.

The San Francisco ordinance text said that nicotine exposure during adolescence "can harm the developing brain" and "can also increase risk for future addiction to other drugs."

It would introduce fines of up $1,000 for each violation by vendors.

Unlike an e-cigarette ban in force in Singapore, the San Francisco legislation does not restrict the use of vaping products -- only sales, manufacturing and distribution.

Recreational cannabis use has been legal for adults in California since January last year.

amz-ban/ft

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Experts fear e-cigarettes fuel teen addiction

E-cigarettes can be an effective tool for smokers aiming to kick their tobacco habit, but officials fear the devices are also creating nicotine addiction among adolescents
.
"E-cigarettes show tremendous promise as a tool for helping smokers who don't respond to other approaches for quitting smoking," Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, said Friday, during a presentation with other health officials.

 "What concerns us is very recent data from the US showing surprising high rates of e-cigarette use by teenagers," he said, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in California.

A recent annual survey of more than 40,000 US high school students showed that in the last month, 8.7 percent of 14-year-olds had used the battery-operated devices that deliver vaporized nicotine into an aerosol inhaled by the user.

And the number only increased with age: 16.2 percent of 16-year-olds and 17.1 percent of 18-year-olds had done the same.

"That's a concern because this may be a unique and new pathway to nicotine exposure," Compton said.

In recent months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that use of e-cigarettes by young non-smokers had tripled from 2011 to 2013, and warned that nicotine can affect brain development in teenagers.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April proposed restrictions on the country's $2-billion e-cigarette industry, such as requiring sellers to enforce a minimum age.

- 'Far less dangerous' -

"Nicotine can be harmful to the growing brain, so it's best if young people avoid it," said Deborah Arnott, head of Britain-based nonprofit Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

"But if they're going to experiment, it's better to use e-cigarettes, as vaping is far less dangerous than smoking and much less addictive," she said.

"So far in the UK and the US, smoking rates are going down more than e-cigarette use is growing. This would not be the case if vaping really were a gateway into smoking," Arnott added.

In the study of 40,000 US teenagers, only four percent of 14-year-olds, seven percent of 16-year-olds and 14 percent of 18-year-olds had smoked real cigarettes in the last month.

E-cigarettes play an important role in helping users quit or reduce smoking, according to the latest research published in December by the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent, international organization that evaluates medical research.

The group conducted two studies showing that around nine percent of those using e-cigarettes were able to stop smoking for at least a year, while only four percent of those who used placebo e-cigarettes were able to.

Among those who were unable to quit smoking, 36 percent of those using e-cigarettes were able to cut their tobacco consumption by half, compared to 28 percent in the placebo group.

"There are likely public health benefits from e-cigarettes if they provide a pathway for smokers to give up tobacco use," said Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health at Britain's University of Birmingham.

"There is evidence that this can happen, and little doubt that e-cigarettes are much less harmful to the smoker than tobacco," he said.

"However, if adolescents who have never used tobacco take up e-cigarette use, this is a matter of profound concern as they are deliberately exposing themselves to a highly addictive substance."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com