The Impact of Smoking on Anti-COVID-19 Antibody Titers After Vaccination: A Narrative Review in Some Asian Countries

Abstract

According to 2019 worldwide statistics, there were more than 1 billion tobacco smokers, making smoking one of the top significant preventable causes of disease and early death. Smoking poses a considerable problem to healthcare systems throughout the world. The coronavirus outbreak, which is now sweeping the world, is causing extensive concern. Since December 2020, several COVID-19 vaccines have been produced and approved, and an efficient immunologic response to vaccination is essential to limiting the pandemic’s harmful health effects. According to several of these research studies, smokers’ vaccine antibody (Ab) titers are lower or decrease more quickly than non-smokers. Thus, this narrative review article was conducted aiming at finding the impact of smoking on anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 immunoglobulin G Ab titers after COVID-19 vaccination in some Asian countries, including China, Japan, Jordan, and Turkey. Relevant English publications from the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched and extracted using keywords such as COVID-19, smoking, vaccination, China, Japan, Jordan, and Turkey. This review revealed that smoking is one of the significant risk factors for COVID-19 infection that emerges after vaccination. Present smoking could promote lower Ab titers, and quitting smoking before immunization increased the ability to respond to the vaccine. Moreover, cigarette smoking and the use of tobacco products could be predictors of a reduced immunological response to the COVID-19 vaccination. To develop a more individualized strategy for vaccination, additional research on the relationships between Ab titers and the thorough histories of people, including smoking history, is necessary.