Smoking cigarettes increases the risk of severe coronavirus infection by dampening the immune response of the body, a new study suggests.

Lab studies on airway models made from human stem cells reveal smoking stops key immune system molecules, called interferons, from working properly.

Interferons are messengers that tell infected cells to make proteins to attack the invading pathogen and are essential for fighting off initial infection.

They also summon support from the wider immune system and warn uninfected cells to prepare for the virus.

The study found smoking stops this pathway from working properly, and this causes up to a threefold increase in the number of human cells infected by the virus.

This finding goes against a growing body of evidence showing smokers are in fact less likely to catch the coronavirus or get severely ill.

Academics have been left baffled by the data, given that decades of research has found smoking tobacco increases the risk of deadly diseases such as lung cancer, strokes, and diabetes.

But once smokers are in hospital, several studies have suggested they are more likely to see their disease rapidly progress and lead to death.

In the models exposed to smoke, the researchers state in their paper, published in Cell Stem Cell, there was between two and three times more infected cells.

'If you think of the airways like the high walls that protect a castle, smoking cigarettes is like creating holes in these walls,' says the author of the latest study Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, from UCLA.

'Smoking reduces the natural defenses and that allows the virus to set in.'[font=Lucida Sans Unicode][/font][img][/img][img][/img][img][/img]

Slowormiir that has bin smoking all his life and twice on Wednesday, coronavirus never catch am so I don't believe u