Questioning the sex-specific differences in the association of smoking on the survival rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients

In the absence of a universally accepted association between smoking and COVID-19 health outcomes, we investigated this relationship in a representative cohort from one of the world's highest tobacco consuming regions. This is the first report from the Middle East and North Africa that tackles specifically the association of smoking and COVID-19 mortality while demonstrating a novel sex-discrepancy in the survival rates among patients. Clinical data for 743 hospitalized COVID-19 patients was retrospectively collected from the leading centre for COVID-19 testing and treatment in Lebanon. Logistic regression, Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for age and stratified by sex were used to assess the association between the current cigarette smoking status of patients and COVID-19 outcomes. In addition to the high smoking prevalence among our hospitalized COVID-19 patients (42.3%), enrolled smokers tended to have higher reported ICU admissions (28.3% vs 16.6%, p