Smoking and COVID-19: Renin-Angiotensin System the Hidden Link

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19, the global pandemic is originated from the Nobel member of the coronavirus family, i.e. SARS-COV-2 initially seen at Wuhan city of China since December 2019 have deeply impacted the lives of people and changed the way of our living. The pandemic has led to the death of thousands of people mostly seen in old age people, people having co-morbidity like cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, obesity, kidney disease, etc. and cigarette smokers. It is found that cigarette smokers are more prone to the COVID-19 infection and have more severity of the disease when infected. From various studies, it has been revealed that there is increased pulmonary ACE2 expression in ever smokers and virus leading to an imbalance in the RAS appears to be an important cause for cigarette smokers which is being impacted more in this pandemic. This review article explains the underlying mechanism why smokers are more prone to COVID-19? and why higher severity of the disease is higher in them?