Department of Medical, Surgical and Advanced Technologies "G.F. Ingrassia", University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 87, Catania, 95123, Italy.
Department of Medical, Surgical and Advanced Technologies "G.F. Ingrassia", University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 87, Catania, 95123, Italy.
Environ Res. 2020 Dec;191:110129. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110129. Epub 2020 Aug 24.
A new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has determined a pneumonia outbreak in China (Wuhan, Hubei Province) in December 2019, called COVID-19 disease. In addition to the person-to person transmission dynamic of the novel respiratory virus, it has been recently studied the role of environmental factors in accelerate SARS-CoV-2 spread and its lethality. The time being, air pollution has been identified as the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world. It affects body's immunity, making people more vulnerable to pathogens. The hypothesis that air pollution, resulting from a combination of factors such as meteorological data, level of industrialization as well as regional topography, can acts both as a carrier of the infection and as a worsening factor of the health impact of COVID-19 disease, has been raised recently. With this review, we want to provide an update state of art relating the role of air pollution, in particular PM, PM and NO, in COVID-19 spread and lethality. The Authors, who first investigated this association, often used different research methods or not all include confounding factors whenever possible. In addition, to date incidence data are underestimated in all countries and to a lesser extent also mortality data. For this reason, the cases included in the reviewed studies cannot be considered conclusive. Although it determines important limitations for direct comparison of results, and more studies are needed to strengthen scientific evidences and support firm conclusions, major findings are consistent, highlighting the important contribution of PM and NO as triggering of the COVID-19 spread and lethality, and with a less extent also PM, although the potential effect of airborne virus exposure it has not been still demonstrated.
一种新型冠状病毒（SARS-CoV-2）于 2019 年 12 月在中国（湖北省武汉市）引发了肺炎疫情，被称为 COVID-19 疾病。除了新型呼吸道病毒的人际传播动态外，最近还研究了环境因素在加速 SARS-CoV-2 传播及其致命性方面的作用。目前，空气污染已被确定为世界上导致疾病和过早死亡的最大环境因素。它会影响人体的免疫力，使人更容易受到病原体的侵害。最近提出了这样一种假设，即空气污染（由气象数据、工业化水平以及区域地形等多种因素组合而成）不仅可以作为感染的载体，还可以作为 COVID-19 疾病健康影响恶化的因素。在这篇综述中，我们旨在提供有关空气污染（特别是 PM、PM 和 NO）在 COVID-19 传播和致命性方面作用的最新研究进展。首先调查这种关联的作者，经常使用不同的研究方法，或者并非总是尽可能包括混杂因素。此外，迄今为止，所有国家的发病率数据都被低估，死亡率数据的低估程度则较小。因此，综述中纳入的病例不能被认为具有结论性。尽管这对结果的直接比较确定了重要的限制，并且需要更多的研究来加强科学证据并支持确定的结论，但主要发现是一致的，突出了 PM 和 NO 作为 COVID-19 传播和致命性的触发因素的重要贡献，以及在较小程度上也包括 PM，但尚未证明空气中病毒暴露的潜在影响。
