id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-317878-bqpj0ey0	Czick, Maureen	COVID’s Razor: RAS Imbalance, the Common Denominator Across Disparate, Unexpected Aspects of COVID-19	2020-09-11		.txt	text/plain	12676	811	45	Silent hypoxia, atypical acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), stroke, olfactory loss, myocarditis, and increased mortality rates in the elderly, in men, in African-Americans, and in patients with obesity, diabetes, and cancer—all bear the fingerprints of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) imbalance, suggesting that RAS is the common culprit. Subpopulations manifesting higher rates of COVID-19 mortality-including hypertensives, the elderly, the obese, diabetics, men, and African-Americans-correlate with preexisting RAS imbalance, with ACE overactivity and/or ACE2 underactivity priming these patients for more severe COVID-19 outcomes. 159 Males generally have higher levels of RAS than premenopausal females, 160 perhaps explaining why male hypertensive rats show a greater blood pressure decrease with ACEIs. 161 Estrogen downregulates the expression of the AT1 gene 162, 163 and suppresses both ROS production in vascular smooth muscle and the enzymatic activity of ACE.	./cache/cord-317878-bqpj0ey0.txt	./txt/cord-317878-bqpj0ey0.txt