Abstract
BackgroundA cross-sectional study (Miyara et al, 2020) conducted by French researchers showed that the rate of current daily smoking was significantly lower in patients with COVID-19 than in the French general population, implying a potentially protective effect of smoking.ObjectiveWe aimed to examine the dissemination of the Miyara et al study among Twitter users and whether a shift in their attitudes toward smoking occurred after its publication as preprint on April 21, 2020.MethodsTwitter posts were crawled between April 14 and May 4, 2020, by the Tweepy stream application programming interface, using a COVID-19–related keyword query. After filtering, the final 1929 tweets were classified into three groups: (1) tweets that were not related to the Miyara et al study before it was published, (2) tweets that were not related to Miyara et al study after it was published, and (3) tweets that were related to Miyara et al study after it was published. The attitudes toward smoking, as expressed in the tweets, were compared among the above three groups using multinomial logistic regression models in the statistical analysis software R (The R Foundation).ResultsTemporal analysis showed a peak in the number of tweets discussing the results from the Miyara et al study right after its publication. Multinomial logistic regression models on sentiment scores showed that the proportion of negative attitudes toward smoking in tweets related to the Miyara et al study after it was published (17.07%) was significantly lower than the proportion in tweets that were not related to the Miyara et al study, either before (44/126, 34.9%; P<.001) or after the Miyara et al study was published (68/198, 34.3%; P<.001).ConclusionsThe public’s attitude toward smoking shifted in a positive direction after the Miyara et al study found a lower incidence of COVID-19 cases among daily smokers.
Highlights
BackgroundCOVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 [1], and given that it is mainly a disease of the respiratory tract, researchers have investigated whether cigarette smokers or vapers are at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, worse COVID-19 disease severity, worse clinical outcomes, or mortality
This paper presents a novel view of the change in sentiment toward smoking before and after a specific paperwas published suggesting that the incidence of COVID-19 was lower among smokers compared to the general population
We aim to examine the spread of the Miyara et al study among Twitter users, attitudes toward the study, attitudes toward smoking, and whether there was a shift in sentiment toward smoking and nicotine after April 21, 2020
Summary
BackgroundCOVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 [1], and given that it is mainly a disease of the respiratory tract, researchers have investigated whether cigarette smokers or vapers are at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, worse COVID-19 disease severity, worse clinical outcomes, or mortality. SARS-CoV-2 binds the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor While it is unclear whether smoking increases the level of ACE2 receptor expression in the respiratory tract, nicotine may compete with SARS-CoV-2 for binding of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor [4]. Multinomial logistic regression models on sentiment scores showed that the proportion of negative attitudes toward smoking in tweets related to the Miyara et al study after it was published (17.07%) was significantly lower than the proportion in tweets that were not related to the Miyara et al study, either before (44/126, 34.9%; P
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