On the connection between supersaturation in the upper airways and «humid-rainy» and «cold-dry» seasonal patterns of influenza
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Global Health, Infectious Diseases, Public Health, Respiratory Medicine
- Keywords
- influenza, flu season, respiratory infections, common cold, seasonality, airways, epidemiology, public health, supersaturation
- Copyright
- © 2017 Ishmatov
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. On the connection between supersaturation in the upper airways and «humid-rainy» and «cold-dry» seasonal patterns of influenza. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2859v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2859v1
Abstract
We have originally shown for the first time the two different climatic patterns of seasonality of influenza and common colds have an only one common “link”. It is the effect of supersaturation and condensational growth in the upper airways which occurs under specific environmental conditions when flu seasons take place in the tropical/subtropical and temperate regions.
We have found that under climatic conditions which are peculiar to the seasonal patterns of influenza and common colds (“humid-rainy” and “cold-dry”) the effect of supersaturation and condensational growth may be additional factor/reason leading to the next:
- dramatic rise of deposition rate of infectious agents from inhaled air in the upper airways;
- additional acidification of epithelial lining fluid in the local areas of the respiratory tract, and, as a result, may lead to destructive impacts on host cells and weakening of the defense mechanisms of the airways;
- additional affecting on the critical local cooling and reducing (as a consequence) the antiviral immune response of the airway epithelial cells.
Thus, the effect of supersaturation and condensational growth can act as a common trigger for influenza, common colds and other respiratory infection in both mid-latitudes and in the tropics/subtropics.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints. It is the first draft of the latest results on seasonal influenza.
The first part of the study (Ishmatov AN. (2016) Why respiratory viruses or bacteria have the highest probability to be deposited in the respiratory tract in flu seasons) is published at https://peerj.com/preprints/2237/[p]