TY - JOUR T1 - Current smoking is not associated with COVID-19 JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.01290-2020 VL - 55 IS - 6 SP - 2001290 AU - Marco Rossato AU - Lucia Russo AU - Sara Mazzocut AU - Angelo Di Vincenzo AU - Paola Fioretto AU - Roberto Vettor Y1 - 2020/06/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/55/6/2001290.abstract N2 - We have read with interest the paper by Leung et al. [1] recently published in the European Respiratory Journal, reporting a higher expression of the protein angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE-2) in the small airway epithelia of smokers and COPD patients with putatively important implications for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, since ACE-2 has been shown to be the receptor utilised by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to enter the host cell [2]. Furthermore, the authors reported that current smokers showed a higher expression of ACE-2 gene expression than non-smokers, concluding that the increased ACE-2 expression in smokers might predispose to increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection [1].Despite the main complications of SARS-CoV-2 infection regard lung involvement, the prevalence of current smoking in COVID-19 patients is very low, thus questioning the role of coexisting active smoking as a risk factor for COVID-19 pneumonia https://bit.ly/3eUnl1R ER -