Barcelona (EFE) develop covid.
This is confirmed by a study by the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), the University of Las Palmas and the CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (Ciberesp), Obesity and Nutrition (Ciberobn ) and Infectious Diseases (Cyberinfec).
According to the IMIM-Hospital del Mar researcher Miquel Porta, this is the first prospective study in the world on the influence of some chemical contaminants on the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and its results may partly explain the large differences in immune and clinical responses to infection.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, has analyzed data obtained before the pandemic on the blood levels of contaminants in healthy people and sought to answer the question of why, under exposure conditions similar to the virus, some people become infected and others no, and why some develop the disease and others do not.
“What the study observes is that some of these contaminants increase the risk of being HIV-positive and of having the disease,” said Porta, one of the study’s lead authors.
Other studies had already determined that there are factors that influence these differences between people, such as the diseases that a person already suffered from (the more comorbidity, the greater the risk of COVID-19), smoking, age, educational level, the density of people in a home or exposure to the virus on public transport or at work.
The researchers had frozen blood samples from 154 healthy people from the general population of Barcelona obtained in 2016 and have linked the levels of contaminants in these people with the frequency of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the incidence of COVID-19. during 2020-2021 in the same people.
Thus, they have observed that in cases with higher blood levels of some contaminants the risk of infection and development of the disease was greater, and they have identified DDD and DDE, derivatives of the DDT insecticide, as those responsible for the greatest risk, as well as lead, thallium, ruthenium, tantalum -also known as tantalum-, benzo(b)fluoranthene and manganese.
The risk of infection was greater the higher the blood levels of thallium, ruthenium, lead and gold, while it was lower the higher the concentrations of iron and selenium.
“An also very relevant finding of the study is that it identifies mixtures of up to five substances from various chemical groups that increase the aforementioned risks,” added Gemma Moncunill, a researcher at ISGlobal, a center promoted by the La Caixa Foundation, and also author of the study.
The researchers believe these results have “considerable scientific and societal relevance,” offering the first prospective, healthy general population-based evidence of a possible link between personal concentrations of some contaminants and SARS-CoV-2 infection and infection. COVID-19.
Scientists have remembered that these contaminants reach the human body through multiple routes, such as electronic devices and through their use in feed in intensive farming.
For this reason, the study suggests that “if it is confirmed that the associations found are causal, there are policies to control the corresponding risks.”
