Key clinical point: Smokers have a significantly higher risk for COVID-19 related hospital admission and mortality than nonsmokers.
Major finding: Current smokers had an 80% higher risk for hospitalization than never-smokers (odds ratio, 1.80; 95% confidence interval, 1.26-2.29). Smokers who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day had a 6.11-fold higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than never-smokers.
Study details: The data come from an observational study of 421,469 individuals from the UK Biobank.
Disclosures: The study was supported by individual grants to several authors. PS Tan, CAC Coupland, MR Munafò, J Hippisley-Cox, and A von Ende reported relationships with pharmaceutical companies and/or research organizations. The remaining authors declared no conflict of interests.
Source: Clift AK et al. Thorax. 2021 Sep 27. doi: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2021-217080 .