Co-exposure to urban particulate matter and aircraft noise adversely impacts the cerebro-pulmonary-cardiovascular axis in mice.

Worldwide, up to 8.8 million excess deaths/year have been attributed to air pollution, mainly due to the exposure to fine particulate matter (PM). Traffic-related noise is an additional contributor to global mortality and morbidity. Both health risk factors substantially contribute to cardiovascular, metabolic and neuropsychiatric sequelae. Studies on the combined exposure are rare and urgently needed because of frequent co-occurrence of both risk factors in urban and industrial settings. To study the synergistic effects of PM and noise, we used an exposure system equipped with aerosol generator and loud-speakers, where C57BL/6 mice were acutely exposed for 3d to either ambient PM (NIST particles) and/or noise (aircraft landing and take-off events). The combination of both stressors caused endothelial dysfunction, increased blood pressure, oxidative stress and inflammation. An additive impairment of endothelial function was observed in isolated aortic rings and even more pronounced in cerebral and retinal arterioles. The increase in oxidative stress and inflammation markers together with RNA sequencing data indicate that noise particularly affects the brain and PM the lungs. The combination of both stressors has additive adverse effects on the cardiovascular system that are based on PM-induced systemic inflammation and noise-triggered stress hormone signaling. We demonstrate an additive upregulation of ACE-2 in the lung, suggesting that there may be an increased vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. The data warrant further mechanistic studies to characterize the propagation of primary target tissue damage (lung, brain) to remote organs such as aorta and heart by combined noise and PM exposure.

Influenza and RSV incidence during COVID-19 pandemic-an observational study from in-hospital point-of-care testing.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has forced the implementation of unprecedented public health measures strategies which might also have a significant impact on the spreading of other viral pathogens such as influenza and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) . The present study compares the incidences of the most relevant respiratory viruses before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in emergency room patients. We analyzed the results of in total 14,946 polymerase chain reaction point-of-care tests (POCT-PCR) for Influenza A, Influenza B, RSV and SARS-CoV-2 in an adult and a pediatric emergency room between December 1, 2018 and March 31, 2021. Despite a fivefold increase in the number of tests performed, the positivity rate for Influenza A dropped from 19.32% (165 positives of 854 tests in 2018/19), 14.57% (149 positives of 1023 in 2019-20) to 0% (0 positives of 4915 tests) in 2020/21. In analogy, the positivity rate for Influenza B and RSV dropped from 0.35 to 1.47%, respectively, 10.65-21.08% to 0% for both in 2020/21. The positivity rate for SARS-CoV2 reached 9.74% (110 of 1129 tests performed) during the so-called second wave in December 2020. Compared to the two previous years, seasonal influenza and RSV incidence was eliminated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Corona-related measures and human behavior patterns could lead to a significant decline or even complete suppression of other respiratory viruses such as influenza and RSV.