AGT and acute respiratory distress syndrome: Dysfunction of the RAS system, particularly uncontrolled elevation of AngII and decreased ACE2 are linked to ALI induced by SARS-CoV virus infection [20, 21, 43], high pathological avian influenza virus infection (H5N1/H7N9) [22, 23] and, recently, SARS-CoV-2 virus infection [24, 58].