Is There a Role for Environmental and Metabolic Factors Predisposing to Severe COVID-19?
Horm Metab Res DOI: 10.1055/a-1182-2016The severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic
affects people around the world. However, there have been striking
differences in the number of infected individuals and deaths in different
countries. Particularly, within Central Europe in countries that are similar
in ethnicity, age, and medical standards and have performed similar steps of
containment, such differences in mortality rates remain inexplicable. We
suggest to consider and explore environmental factors to explain these
intriguing variations. Countries like Northern Italy, France, Spain, and UK
have suffered from 5 times more deaths from the corona virus infection than
neighboring countries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark
related to the size of their respective populations. There is a striking
correlation between the level of environmental pollutants including
pesticides, dioxins, and air pollution such as NO2 known to
affect immune function and healthy metabolism with the rate of mortality in
COVID-19 pandemic in these European countries. There is also a correlation
with the use of chlorination of drinking water in these regions. In addition
to the improvement of environmental protective programs, there are
possibilities to lower the...
Source: Hormone and Metabolic Research - Category: Endocrinology Authors: Bornstein, Stefan R. Voit-Bak, Karin Schmidt, Dieter Morawietz, Henning Bornstein, Alexander Benjamin Balanzew, Waldimir Julius, Ulrich Rodionov, Roman N. Biener, Anne Maria Wang, Jun Schulte, Klaus-Martin Krebs, Peter Vollmer, G ünter Straube, R. Tags: Hypothesis Source Type: research
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