Does solar ultraviolet radiation play a role in COVID-19 infection and deaths? An environmental ecological study in Italy
Giancarlo Isaia, Henri Diémoz, Francesco Maluta, Ilias Fountoulakis, Daniela Ceccon, Alcide Di Sarra, Stefania Facta, Francesca Fedele, Giuseppe Lorenzetto, Anna Maria Siani, Gianluca Isaia
Science of The Total Environment, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143757
A significantly stronger impact in mortality and morbidity by COVID-19 has been observed in the northern Italian regions compared to the southern ones. The reasons of this geographical pattern might involve several concurrent factors. The main objective of this work is to investigate whether any correlations exist between the spatial distribution of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the different Italian regions and the amount of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation at the Earth's surface. To this purpose, in this environmental ecological study a mixed-effect exponential regression was built to explain the incidence of COVID-19 based on the environmental conditions, and demographic and pathophysiologic factors. Observations and estimates of the cumulative solar UV exposure have been included to quantify the amount of radiation available e.g., for pre-vitamin D3 synthesis or SARS-CoV-2 inactivation by sunlight. The analysis shows a significant correlation (p-value <5 × 10 −2 ) between the response variables (death percentage, incidence of infections and positive tests) and biologically effective solar UV Science of the Total Environment 757 (2021) 143757
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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