ArticleToxicology reports2021
Nicotinic cholinergic system and COVID-19:
Article in Toxicology reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It has been retracted, and should not be counted. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Tobacco smoking and severity of COVID-19: Experience from a hospital-based prospective cohort study in Lyon, France.Journal of medical virology · 2021Trial
- Rabies virus glycoprotein variants modulate neuronal nicotinic receptors in a conformation-dependent manner.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The potential role of carvedilol in COVID-19 management: perspective and take-away.Inflammopharmacology · 2025Review
- The Possible Mechanistic Basis of Individual Susceptibility to Spike Protein Injury.Advances in virology · 2025Review
- Protecting effects of smoking against COVID-19: a community-based retrospective cohort study in middle- and older-aged adults.Internal and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- α7 nicotinic receptor activation mitigates herpes simplex virus type 1 infection in microglia cells.Antiviral research · 2024Article
- Review
- Subtyping of COVID-19 samples based on cell-cell interaction in single cell transcriptomes.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- New insights on the potential effect of progesterone in Covid-19: Anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects.Immunity, inflammation and disease · 2023Review
- 'Spikeopathy': COVID-19 Spike Protein Is Pathogenic, from Both Virus and Vaccine mRNA.Biomedicines · 2023Review
- The role of HMGB1 in COVID-19-induced cytokine storm and its potential therapeutic targets: A review.Immunology · 2023Review
- Ginkgo Biloba and Long COVID: In Vivo and In Vitro Models for the Evaluation of Nanotherapeutic Efficacy.Pharmaceutics · 2023Review
- Cholinergic dysfunction in COVID-19: frantic search and hoping for the best.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2023Review
- Nicotine exposure decreases likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 RNA expression and neuropathology in the hACE2 mouse brain but not moribundity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Is the post-COVID-19 syndrome a severe impairment of acetylcholine-orchestrated neuromodulation that responds to nicotine administration?Bioelectronic medicine · 2023Article
- Citicoline and COVID-19: vis-à-vis conjectured.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2022Review
- An experimental test of the nicotinic hypothesis of COVID-19.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Inflammatory reflex disruption in COVID-19.Clinical & experimental neuroimmunology · 2022Review
- Effect of stimulated platelets in COVID-19 thrombosis: Role of alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
- Expression of concern · 2021-12-17Concerns/Issues about Data · Concerns/Issues about Results and/or Conclusions · Investigation by Journal/Publisher · · the entire special issue is subject to an expression of concern;
Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 infection was announced as a pandemic in March 2020. Since then, several scientists have focused on the low prevalence of smokers among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. These findings led to our hypothesis that the Nicotinic Cholinergic System (NCS) plays a crucial role in the manifestation of COVID-19 and its severe symptoms. Molecular modeling revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein might bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) through a cryptic epitope homologous to snake toxins, substrates well documented and known for their affinity to the nAChRs. This binding model could provide logical explanations for the acute inflammatory disorder in patients with COVID-19, which may be linked to severe dysregulation of NCS. In this study, we present a series of complexes with cholinergic agonists that can potentially prevent SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein from binding to nAChRs, avoiding dysregulation of the NCS and moderating the symptoms and clinical manifestations of COVID-19. If our hypothesis is verified by
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.