Lower Incidence of COVID-19 at High Altitude: Facts and Confounders.
Pun, Matiram, Rachel Turner, Giacomo Strapazzon, Hermann Brugger, and Erik R. Swenson. Lower incidence of COVID-19 at high altitude: Facts and confounders. High Alt Med Biol. 21:217-222, 2020.-The rapid transmission, increased morbidity, and mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has exhausted many health care systems and the global economy. Large variations in COVID-19 prevalence and incidence have been reported across and within many countries worldwide; however, this remains poorly understood. The variability and susceptibility across the world have been mainly attributed to differing socioeconomic status, burden of chronic diseases, access to health care, strength of health care systems, and early or late adoption of control measures. Environmental factors such as pollution, ambient temperature, humidity, and seasonal weather patterns at different latitudes may influence how severe the pandemic is and the incidence of infection in any part of the world. In addition, recent epidemiological data have been used to propose that altitude of residence may not only influence those environmental features considered key to lesser viral transmission, but also susceptibility to more severe forms of COVID-19 through hypoxic-hypobaria driven genomic or nongenomic adaptations specific to high-altitude populations. In this review, we critically examine these factors and attempt to determine based upon available scientific and epidemiological data whether living in high-altitude regions might be protective against COVID-19 as recent publications have claimed.
['Pun|Matiram|M|', 'Turner|Rachel|R|', 'Strapazzon|Giacomo|G|', 'Brugger|Hermann|H|', 'Swenson|Erik R|ER|']
D000064:Acclimatization D000531:Altitude D000073640:Betacoronavirus D000086382:COVID-19 D018352:Coronavirus Infections D004198:Disease Susceptibility D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious D006801:Humans D015994:Incidence D058873:Pandemics D011024:Pneumonia, Viral D000086402:SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19 high altitude SARS-CoV-2 UV rays hypoxia public health