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Clinical and epidemiological context of COVID-19
Published in Sanjeeva Srivastava, Multi-Pronged Omics Technologies to Understand COVID-19, 2022
Viswanthram Palanivel, Akanksha Salkar, Radha Yadav, Renuka Bankar, Om Shrivastav, Arup Acharjee
SARS-CoV-2 has caused a pandemic of unimaginable proportions. It was first identified in China in December 2019 and was named COVID-19 in February 2020 by WHO (Carvalho, Krammer, and Iwasaki 2021). Less than a month after it was named, COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic by WHO in March 2020 (Carvalho, Krammer, and Iwasaki 2021). This viral disease is transmitted via droplets and initially presents itself as a lower respiratory tract infection. Most infected individuals manifest mild disease and present flu-like symptoms such as dry cough, body ache, and fever. Atypical symptoms such as anorexia, diarrhea, and vomiting have also been reported. Some patients manifest severe respiratory illness with conditions such as dyspnea and hypoxia or they would show greater than 50% lung involvement on imaging and may further progress to the critical stage with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), respiratory failure, viremia, and eventually multi-organ system dysfunction (Zaim et al. 2020). Extrapulmonary involvement of the virus due to angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE2) receptor expression in different organs increases the complexity of disease pathogenesis (Dong et al. 2020). The infected individuals were initially treated with a combination of antiviral or antibiotics with other supplementary drugs to alleviate symptoms due to the lack of specific COVID-19 medicines and vaccines. The pandemic severely impacted the health systems and economies globally, thus it’s been called a “21st-century mayhem”.
Significance of Childhood Lower Respiratory Infections
Published in Richard B. Gammage, Stephen V. Kaye, Vivian A. Jacobs, Indoor Air and Human Health, 2018
Frederick W. Henderson, Alan M. Collier
Viruses and bacteria are the principal classes of organisms responsible for lower respiratory tract infections in previously healthy individuals. Our studies concern the etiologic roles of respiratory viruses and a single bacterium, Mycoplasma pneumoniae in childhood LRI. Investigators have had difficulty defining the importance of S. pneumoniae and H. influenzae as etiologic agents of outpatient LRD since isolation of these bacteria from blood, pleural fluid or pulmonary tissue is usually required to establish their etiologic role in LRD patients with certainty. We shall not discuss these agents further.
Indoor air quality and energy-saving potential improvement of a range-hood-integrated air cleaner
Published in Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 2023
Yumei Hou, Yukun Xu, Zhi Liu, Ziyin Lin, Wuhao Xie, Changsheng Cao, Zhiwei Zheng, Jun Gao
Building ventilation is an important means of controlling indoor pollution in residential buildings. Now that COVID-19 still hinders people’s everyday life, designers of comfort ventilation in residential buildings fully realize the importance of effective air distribution for the dilution of infectious aerosols to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) (Wang et al. 2021; Li et al. 2021; Morawska et al. 2020). Cooking oil fumes (COF) from kitchens are the primary source of indoor air pollution (Dennekamp et al. 2001; He et al. 2004; See and Balasubramanian 2006; Zhao and Zhao 2018). Epidemiologic studies showed that long-term inhalation of COF led to severe health risks (Du et al. 2017), such as an increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (Ko et al. 2000), acute lower respiratory tract infection (Wang, Zhou, and Shi 1996), and lung cancer (Hong et al. 2015) for nonsmokers, especially for women and children (Smith et al. 2014; Gao et al. 2009; Muralidharan et al. 2015). Therefore, designing reasonable air distribution in kitchens to reduce exposure to COF is essential and urgent.
Association between short-term exposure to air pollution and respiratory diseases among children in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Published in International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 2022
Junyao Zheng, Xiao Yang, Siqi Hu, Yikai Wang, Jinlin Liu
To the authors’ knowledge, studies on the association between air pollution and respiratory diseases in China have rapidly increased in recent years. To date, some systematic reviews of the acute effects of air pollution on children’s pneumonia and lower respiratory tract infection have been conducted (Zhuo et al. 2015; Liang et al. 2016; Sun et al. 2017), but there is still no published meta-analysis of the association between short-term exposure to air pollution and respiratory diseases among children in China. However, these exposure-response functions observed in adults and other countries may not be generalizable to children in China. Based on the above information, this study sought to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between short-term exposure to air pollution and respiratory diseases among children in China to assess the evidence and the impact on developing effective public health policies.
Maternal pesticide exposure and its relation to childhood cancer: an umbrella review of meta-analyses
Published in International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 2021
Sehar Iqbal, Shahbaz Ali, Inayat Ali
Pregnant women are more vulnerable to environmental exposures, which might lead to developmental hazards. Exposure to an environmental contaminant during and after cell differentiation or cell proliferation results in abnormal physiological development and even fetal death (Gilden et al. 2010). Organochlorine pesticides, including ß-HCH and pp-DDE, are recognized as ubiquitous environmental contaminants and accumulate in human and animal adipose tissues. During gestation, these compounds pass through the placental barrier to the cord blood (Herrero-Mercado et al. 2010). The toxic effects of these compounds can compromise placental functions and may contribute to developmental and intellectual problems in children (Torres-Sánchez et al. 2007). Additionally, maternal pp-DDE exposure has been reported as a risk factor for lower respiratory tract infection in infants aged 6 and 14 months due to immunologic suppression (Sunyer et al. 2010).