Marco Rossato1. 1. Clinica Medica 3, Department of Medicine-DIMED, University-Hospital of Padova, Via Giustiniani, 2, 35128, Padua, Italy. marco.rossato@unipd.it.
Dear Editor,I have read with interest the letter by Purhoit and Panda recently published in Human Cell, reporting the inverse relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection and current smoking in Indian population [1].The results of the Authors are quite interesting, confirming the observations coming from all around the world showing a quite low prevalence of active smokers among COVID-19 patients [2-4].Recently, we have reported that among 132 Italian patients hospitalized in our COVID-hospital for SARS-CoV-2-related pneumonia, no one was an active smoker, being patients never smokers or ex-smokers [5].In their paper, the authors cited our previously published paper, but they reported that our data (coming from Italy) are in contrast with their observations. The opposite is true, since our previously published data completely agree with Authors’observations showing the absence of active smokers among hospitalized patients for SARS-CoV-2-related pneumonia.