New paper discusses how smoking may affect risk for COVID-19
A new paper published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society discusses how smoking may affect risk for COVID-19 and the types of research that are needed to better understand the link between smoking and COVID-19 risk.
In Smoking and COVID-19: The Real Deal, Enid Neptune, MD, and Michelle N. Eakin, PhD, of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, discuss research to date on this topic and propose areas of research that can help clarify this relationship.
Studies have shown that current smokers with COVID-19 have twice the risk of dying in the hospital as nonsmokers. However, the data on whether tobacco use increases the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection is mixed.