How Nicotine Withdrawal Effects COVID-19

This repository contains the code for our paper "A Computational Analysis of the Effect of Nicotine Withdrawal on Cardiac Arrhythmia and its Relationship with COVID-19 Mortality Rates" by Ayaan Haque (Project Lead), Aryaman Kukal, Yamuna Rao, and David Cho from Saratoga High School, American High School, Mission San Jose High School, and UC Berkeley. Our paper was accepted for publication to the Journal of Student Research. This research was conducted as part of the Aspiring Scholars Directed Research Program under the advisorship of Keshav Rao.

Preprint: https://www.academia.edu/45044054

Journal URL: https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1302

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v10i1.1302

Abstract

Certain chronic conditions are becoming increasingly ignored due to the magnitude of COVID-19. However, continued research on these conditions, such as nicotine addiction and heart disease, and how they relate to COVID-19 will help researchers assess case severity more adequately. It has been commonly asserted that smoking cessation will reduce COVID-19 mortality rates for smokers due to how it damages the lungs. However, smoking cessation results in nicotine withdrawal, which is proven to cause side effects that could conversely increase the severity of COVID-19. This study aims to determine how nicotine withdrawal increases the probability of developing cardiac arrhythmia, and how that relationship increases COVID-19 mortality rates. To conduct our study, we compiled datasets from various health organizations, including the CDC and WHO, to find correlations between these three conditions. We first investigated the complications that result from nicotine withdrawal and how they may develop into cardiac arrhythmia. Following initial inquiries, we then calculated how cardiac arrhythmia increases COVID-19 mortality rates. To validate our conclusions, we compared smoking cessation rates with COVID-19 mortality rates in different states to isolate direct correlation between the two conditions. We determined that nicotine withdrawal has a 32.7% probability of causing cardiac arrhythmia, and that cardiac arrhythmia increases the chance of death from COVID-19 by 14.7%. Ultimately, we found that nicotine withdrawal increases the COVID-19 mortality rate by 4.8% compared to the general population, a significant and concerning finding.

Citation

If you found this paper or code useful, please consider citing.

@article{haque2021arrhythmia,
  title={A Computational Analysis of the Effect of Nicotine Withdrawal on Cardiac Arrhythmia and its Relationship with COVID-19 Mortality Rates},
  author={Haque, Ayaan and Kukal, Aryaman and Rao, Yamuna and Cho, David and Rao, Keshav},
  journal={Journal of Student Research},
  volume= {10},
  number= {1},
  year={2021},
  month = {Mar.},
  url={https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/1302},
  DOI={10.47611/jsrhs.v10i1.1302}
}