Impact of environmental factors on viruses/virus infections – a systematic review
This project will review the current literature on the associations between ambient air pollution and meteorological factors and their impact on the appearance of virus infections.
Impact of environmental factors on viruses/virus infections – a systematic review
This project will review the current literature on the associations between ambient air pollution and meteorological factors and their impact on the appearance of virus infections.
Overview
In this project, we will systematically review the current literature regarding the following questions:
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Do high levels of ambient air pollution impair the immune defense and make humans more vulnerable to viruses?
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Does ambient air pollution lead to (chronic) diseases, which make the human body more vulnerable to viruses?
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Do non-optimal meteorological factors lead to (chronic) diseases, which make the human body more vulnerable to viruses?
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Does ambient air pollutants actively transport viruses leading to a higher virus load in areas with higher air pollution?
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Do meteorological factors such as ambient temperature and humidity have an impact on the virus load?
A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science and the pre-print server MedRxiv will be conducted.
The search will include on the one hand the viruses causing the respective diseases (such as SARS CoV-1, SARS CoV-2, MERS-Cov and influenza virus) but also air pollutants and meteorological factors (ambient temperature, humidity, wind speed) which might be related to the spread and/or severity of the disease.
Two researchers will independently rate the papers and extract the data. Data of publications with sufficient quality will be summarised following the “Synthesis without Meta-analysis (SWiM)” methodology (BMJ 2020; 368. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6890).
The study was registered in PROSPERO, the international prospective register of systematic reviews (registration number CRD42020199906).
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