As far as I can tell, there are no studies showing a higher ACE2 causes more severe disease. Sure, it could, but the pathophysiological models and animal data suggest that it is the loss of ACE2 that may drive disease severity.
There is a contradictory preprint (that hasn’t passed peer review) on ACE2 mRNA expression in smokers’ lungs being higher than non-smokers; but there is data saying the opposite happens in animal models of mice exposed to smoke:
Relative ace2 reduction correlates w disease severity; viral load growth the same between groups - check out study!
Chinese paper discusses this as well:
There is a contradictory preprint (that hasn’t passed peer review) on ACE2 mRNA expression in smokers’ lungs being higher than non-smokers; but there is data saying the opposite happens in animal models of mice exposed to smoke:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20178811-losartan-attenuates...
There is also an inaccurate preprint on ethnic groups and ACE2 expression with a low n count which also didn’t pass peer review.
ACE2 loss is probably bad, having more ACE2 probably doesn’t drive disease severity:
https://twitter.com/__philipn__/status/1229568317167243264?s...
Relative ace2 reduction correlates w disease severity; viral load growth the same between groups - check out study! Chinese paper discusses this as well:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32061198-inhibitors-of-ras-m...