Prats-Uribe A, Xie J, Prieto-Alhambra D, et al. - In this study, the relationship between smoking and COVID-19 infection and subsequent mortality was explored. Researchers conducted a prospective study including a total of 402,978 participants from the UK Biobank cohort. Current-smokers, previous-smokers with never-smokers were compared and the risk ratio (RR) of COVID-19 infection and subsequent mortality were calculated using Poisson regression adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index, and socioeconomic status. Age modified the relationship between smoking and COVID-19 infection and subsequent death. The results illustrated that smokers and previous smokers aged under 69 were at higher risk of COVID-19 infection, implying the risk is correlated with elevated exposure to SARS-COV-2 virus. The findings imply that once infected, older smokers were twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than never smokers, possibly mediated by an increased risk of chronic conditions/illnesses.