כתבות אמצע - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology > כתבות אמצע > Page 28

A novel approach to treating type 2 diabetes is being developed at the Technion, using an autograft of muscle cells engineered to take in sugar at increased rates.

The disease, caused by insulin resistance and reduction of cells’ ability to absorb sugar, is characterized by increased blood sugar levels. Its long-term complications include heart disease, strokes, damage to the retina that can result in blindness, kidney failure, and poor blood flow in the limbs that may lead to amputations. It is currently treated by a combination of lifestyle changes, medication, and insulin injections, but ultimately is associated with a 10-year reduction in life expectancy.

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg

Led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D. student Rita Beckerman from the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory in the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering presents a novel treatment approach, using an autograft of muscle cells engineered to take in sugar at increased rates. Mice treated in this manner displayed normal blood sugar levels for months after a single procedure. The group’s findings were recently published in Science Advances.

Rita Beckerman

Muscle cells are among the main targets of insulin, and they are supposed to absorb sugar from the blood. In their study, Prof. Levenberg’s group isolated muscle cells from mice and engineered these cells to present more insulin-activated sugar transporters (GLUT4). These cells were then grown to form an engineered muscle tissue, and finally transported back into the abdomen of diabetic mice. The engineered cells not only proceeded to absorb sugar correctly, improving blood sugar levels, but also induced improved absorption in the mice’s other muscle cells, by means of signals sent between them. After this one treatment, the mice remained cured of diabetes for four months – the entire period they remained under observation. Their blood sugar levels remained lower, and they had reduced levels of fatty liver normally displayed in type 2 diabetes.

“By taking cells from the patient and treating them, we eliminate the risk of rejection,” Prof. Levenberg explained. These cells can easily integrate back into being part of the body and respond to the body’s signaling activity.

Currently, around 34 million Americans, just over 1 in 10, suffer from diabetes, 90% of them from type 2 diabetes. An effective treatment – and one that is a one-time treatment rather than daily medication – could significantly improve both quality of life and life expectancy of those who have diabetes. The same method could also be used to treat various enzyme deficiency disorders.

The implanted construct: the engineered muscle fibers (in red) express the GLUT4 (in green)

This work was funded by Rina and Avner Schneur as part of the Rina and Avner Schneur Center for Diabetes Research. Rita Beckerman is an Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program scholar.

Click here for the paper in Science Advances.

“We shape our buildings; therefore, they shape us,” Winston Churchill once said.

The next generation of Israel’s architects is already starting to shape our country, and as the first day of the 2021-2022 academic year approaches, it’s time to look at the accomplishments of our architecture students.

“Experiential Routine.” The project is among those that will be nominated for the Azrieli Award, the most prestigious award for architecture students in Israel

Here are some of the highlights from last year’s project fair, presenting the work of students from the various studios of the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. Some of the following projects will be nominated for the Azrieli Award, the most prestigious award for architecture students in Israel:

Experiential Routine

How much of our commute do we spend in corridors, places “in between?” Between tube stations, between the train and the bus, in the corridors of an office building? Amit Sadik from the Technology Studio decided to focus on those everyday places, and turned the daily commute into an experience that could evoke feelings of novelty, curiosity and pleasure. To achieve this, using a station of the planned light rail in Tel Aviv as a test case, Amit incorporated plants and daylight into the space, and opened multiple optional pathways, inviting strolling and discovery.

Commuting “in between”

Productive Bay

We have tucked the industrial areas of our cities out of sight, and out of mind. The pollution they produce is something we’d rather not think about. Dina Gorodnitski from the Space, Consciousness and Sustainability Studio, re-examined the industrial area of Haifa Bay, the city’s “black hole”, and reimagined it as a sustainable mixed-use area. Dina proposed integrated recycling centers, promenades overlooking the port, a symbiotic environment of urban life and sustainable industrial production.

Reimagining the industrial area of Haifa Bay

Informalization

Asma Abu-Raya from the Urban Studio focused on the Bedouin villages in Israel’s desert The Negev. She examined the traditional lifestyle of the Bedouin community and the organic, “informal” development of the villages, compared to the “formal” development, and proposed ways in which city planning could take into consideration the local culture, involve residents in the planning, allow space for spontaneous growth to meet the changing needs, and encourage people to take responsibility for their environment as a community.

Encouraging people to take responsibility for their environment — as a community

Local knowledge as the basis of autonomy

Layan Salameh’s project outlines a discontinuous urban infrastructure that will enable autonomy over water, as a resource of life, and will revive the textile industry in the Old City of Jerusalem (East Jerusalem), in order to ensure future economic independence of the residents. The planning strategy is based on local knowledge; industrial spaces serve the public through planning tools that enable collective learning of the production process.

Discontinuous urban infrastructure

A few years ago, the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning changed its curriculum from a four-year to a six-year program. Students now leave the Technion with a master’s degree, having attained greater maturity and a broader understanding of the field. In 2021, the first class of students graduated under the new program. To learn more about the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning – the oldest academic institute in Israel for the study of architecture – visit https://architecture.technion.ac.il/.

“Experiential Routine”

Story by Tatyana Haykin

From 3D-printing entire blood vessel networks to FoodTech innovation, this issue of our newsletter is jampacked with exciting news.

On October 10, 2021, German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel received an Honorary Doctorate from the Technion. To watch the video of the ceremony, during which Technion President Professor Uri Sivan bestowed the honorary degree on Dr. Merkel, and read about the latest FoodTech innovations, 3D-printing of blood vessel networks, predicting heart conditions, and more, check out our October 2021 newsletter, by clicking here.

3D-printing blood vessel networks

To read previous issues of Technion LIVE, click here. To subscribe, click here.

Technion researchers have presented an innovative method for the formation of nanowires. In it, the nanowires form within line defects that exist in metals. Such defects are known as dislocations. This is the first time that dislocation lines in a material of one kind serve as a template for the growth of a different inorganic material in the form of nanowires. The study, which was published in PNAS, was led by Professor Boaz Pokroy and Ph.D. student Lotan Portal of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

Professor Boaz Pokroy

Dislocations are a significant phenomenon in materials science since they affect the material’s properties on both the macro- and microscales. For example, a high dislocation density increases a metal’s strength and hardness. The dislocation edges on metal surfaces and the atoms in their proximity tend to be more chemically activated compared to other atoms in the material and tend to facilitate various chemical reactions, such as corrosion and catalysis.

Lotan Portal

The researchers in Prof. Pokroy’s group created nanowires of gold-cyanide complex from classic Au-Ag alloy. In professional terminology, they synthesized inorganic gold(I)-cyanide (AuCN) systems in the shape of nanowires, using an autocatalytic reaction (i.e. through the acceleration of a reaction by one of its reactants). Gold-cyanide complex is used in numerous fields including ammonia gas detection (NH₃ sensors), catalysis (acceleration) of water-splitting reactions, and others.

In black and white: Scanning electron microscope image of a lateral section of a sample that contains a gold-cyanide nanowire created from Au-Ag (to a depth of 2 microns from the surface of the sample).

In the process developed by the researchers, nanowires crystallize at the dislocation ends on the surface of the original gold-silver (Au-Ag) alloy, and the final structure obtained is classic nanoporous (sponge-like) gold, with a layer of nanowires emerging from it. Formation of the nanowires occurs during the classic selective dealloying process that separates the silver from the system and forms the nanoporous gold and is achieved only when the dislocation density exceeds a critical value, as presented in the kinetic model developed and demonstrated in the article.

The model provides a possible route for growing one-dimensional inorganic complexes while controlling the growth direction, shape, and morphology of a crystal according to the original alloy’s slip system. As mentioned, this scientific and technological achievement has numerous potential applications.

In the figure: A schematic drawing depicting 1D nucleation and growth of a gold-cyanide nanowire along a dislocation in the original alloy during the classic selective dealloying process.

The research was sponsored by a European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept Grant (“np-Gold” project) as part of the Horizon 2020 Program.

For the article in PNAS click here

Researchers at the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine have developed an innovative algorithm that detects an uninterrupted common denominator in multidimensional data gathered from tumors of different patients. The study, which was published in Cell Systems, was led by Professor Shai Shen-Orr, Dr. Yishai Ofran, and Dr. Ayelet Alpert, and conducted in collaboration between researchers at the Technion, the Rambam Health Care Campus, the Shaare Zedek Medical Center and the University of Texas.

Professor Shai Shen-Orr (right) and Dr. Ayelet Alpert

In recent years, cancer research has undergone a series of significant revolutions, including the introduction of single-cell high-resolution characterization capabilities, or, more specifically, simultaneous high-throughput profiling of cancer samples using single-cell RNA sequencing and proteomics analysis. This has led to the generation of vast quantities of multidimensional data on a huge number of cells, allowing for the characterization of both the healthy tissue and malignant tissues. This high amount of data has revealed the great variability between tumors of different patients, where cellular characterization that is derived from the patient’s genetic background is unique to each patient.

Despite the substantial advantage that is derived from such an accurate characterization of the specific patient, this development hinders comparison of different patients: in the absence of a common denominator, the comparison, which is essential for identifying prognostic markers (e.g. mortality or severity of illness), becomes impossible.

The tuMap algorithm developed by the Technion researchers provides a solution to this complex challenge by means of a “variance-based comparison.” The innovative algorithm delivers the possibility to place numerous different tumors on a uniform scale that provides a benchmark for comparison. In this way, the tumors of different patients can be meaningfully compared, as well as tumors of the same patient over the disease course (for example, on diagnosis and after treatment). The resolution provided by the algorithm can be leveraged for clinical applications such as prediction of various clinical indices with a very high accuracy, outperforming traditional tools. Although the researchers tested the algorithm on leukemia tumors, they believe that it will also be relevant for other cancer types.

The research was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation, the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

For the article in Cell Systems click here

Researchers from the Technion and the University of North Carolina (UNC) have developed an algorithm that steers surgical needles along 3D curvilinear trajectories. The researchers – Dr. Oren Salzman of the Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion and Prof. Ron Alterovitz and Mengyu Fu of UNC – announced the development at the recently held virtual 2021 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference.

Dr. Oren Salzman

Numerous medical procedures, such as biopsies and localized therapy delivery for cancer, require that a needle be steered safely through tissue, to the target. Straight needles can “get the job done” when the straight path from the point of entry to the target tissue does not pass through vulnerable tissue, but in many cases, the target tissue is “hidden” behind a bone or vulnerable tissue, and in these cases, the surgeon must avoid anatomical obstacles, a difficult, complex task, most certainly when the body parts involved are vulnerable and sensitive.

Against this backdrop, in recent years, medical needles with bevel tips were developed. These needles are controlled by rotating them at their base. The problem is that directing these needles is neither simple nor intuitive, and steering them manually involves numerous risks. This has led to the development of “motion planning algorithms” designed to accurately and safely direct the needle. These algorithms have displayed impressive capabilities, and yet, since these are invasive procedures, the degree of precision required is very high; otherwise, the systems will not be granted regulatory approval.

The development presented by the researchers at the conference illustrates the importance of computer science in solving problems related to medicine and biomedical engineering. On the basis of relevant medical images such as a computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, the new algorithm computes the optimal trajectory that will lead the needle to the target while avoiding damage to various anatomical obstacles. As opposed to existing algorithms, the new algorithm provides a “completeness” guarantee that the needle can indeed reach the specified target while avoiding those tissues, and if no such safe motion plan exists, it will inform the user accordingly. Moreover, it computes plans faster compared to rival steerable needle motion planners and with a higher success rate. According to the researchers, the technology presented at the conference is a new algorithmic foundation that is expected to lead to additional applications based on automated steerable needles.

Three views of the lung environment. The needle steers to targets (green) while avoiding anatomical obstacles including large blood vessels (red), bronchial tubes (brown), and the lung boundary (gray)

The research was funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).

Dr. Oren Salzman joined the Technion staff in the summer of 2019 following a postdoctoral fellowship in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is head of the Computational Robotics Lab (CRL) in the Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

The paper presented at the conference is available at: http://www.roboticsproceedings.org/rss17/p081.pdf

This year’s Technion team is the largest ever.

This month, three universities will participate in the inaugural Israeli Formula SAE Race: The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

The Technion Formula Student Team has been led by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering since 2013. Academic guidance is provided by Prof. Leonid Tartakovsky, who replaced Prof. Reuven Katz, the project supervisor from 2013 to 2019.

The Technion team with the 2021 model

Headed by Muans Omari, a master’s student in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, this year’s Technion team is its largest ever, made up of more than 60 students from various faculties. This is Omari’s third year participating in the project; he started out as a volunteer and driver, subsequently progressed to head of the engine crew, and since 2021, has served as the Technion’s project lead. As a driver, he won first place driving on the figure-8 Skidpad circuit in the Czech Republic in the summer of 2019, just before the global COVID-19 outbreak. During that race, the Technion unveiled the lightest car in the history of the competition, which weighed in at just 132 kg of advanced technology, after “Technion Formula” shed 120 kg in just three years.

“After two years in which we were prevented from participating in races in Europe because of the pandemic, we decided to bring the race to Israel,” said Omari, “and the three universities that will be competing in October – the Technion, Tel Aviv University, and Ben Gurion University – are fully on board. This is a unique, adrenaline-intensive motorsport event that combines engineering theory and technological applications. We believe it will have a direct impact on the vehicle industry in Israel and encourage investors and local firms to develop vehicles and other relevant products.”

The Formula cars from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The opening event in August 2021 was attended by experts from the Ministry of Transportation, who advised the teams on adapting the car to comply with licensing requirements in Israel.

The race will take place October 20-October 21 at the MotorCity – Motor Park Racing Circuit in Beersheba, Israel.

Formula Student is a series of international competitions in which university teams compete to design, manufacture, and race the best performing racecars.

The student teams

What if a computer told you that you were going to develop a heart condition in five years? You would have time to change your lifestyle, and perhaps mitigate or avoid the condition. A team of Technion researchers taught a computer to do just that.

Shany Biton and Sheina Gendelman, two M.Sc. students working under the supervision of Assistant Professor Joachim A. Behar, head of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine laboratory (AIMLab.) in the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, wrote a machine learning algorithm capable of accurately predicting whether a patient will develop atrial fibrillation within five years. Conceptually, the researchers sought to find out whether a machine learning algorithm could capture patterns predictive of atrial fibrillation even though there was no atrial fibrillation diagnosed by a human cardiologist at the time.

AIMLab.

Atrial fibrillation is an abnormal heart rhythm that is not immediately life-threatening, but significantly increases patients’ risk of stroke and death. Warning patients that they are at risk of developing it can give them time to change their lifestyle and avoid or postpone the onset of the condition. It may also encourage regular follow-ups with the patient’s cardiologist, ensuring that if and when the condition develops, it will be identified quickly, and treatment will be started without delay. Known risk factors for atrial fibrillation include sedentary lifestyle, obesity, smoking, genetic predisposition, and more.

Prof. Joachim Behar

Ms. Biton and Ms. Gendelman used more than one million 12-lead ECG recordings from more than 400,000 patients to train a deep neural network to recognize patients at risk of developing atrial fibrillation within 5 years. Then, they combined the deep neural network with clinical information about the patient, including some of the known risk factors. Both the ECG recordings and the patients’ electronic health record were provided by the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais (TNMG), a public telehealth system assisting 811 of the 853 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The resulting machine learning model was able to correctly predict the development of atrial fibrillation risk in 60% of cases, while preserving a high specificity of 95%, meaning that only 5% of persons identified as being potentially at risk did not develop the condition.

“We do not seek to replace the human doctor – we don’t think that would be desirable,” said Prof. Behar of the results, “but we wish to put better decision support tools into the doctors’ hands. Computers are better equipped to process some forms of data. For example, examining an ECG recording today, a cardiologist would be looking for specific features which are known to be associated with a particular disease. Our model, on the other hand, can look for and identify patterns on its own, including patterns that might not be intelligible to the human eye.”

Doctors have progressed from taking a patient’s pulse manually, to using a statoscope, and then the ECG. Using machine learning to assist the analysis of ECG recordings could be the next step on that road.

Since ECG is a low-cost routine test, the machine learning model could easily be incorporated into clinical practice and improve healthcare management for many individuals. Access to more patients’ datasets would let the algorithm get progressively better as a risk prediction tool. The model could also be adapted to predict other cardiovascular conditions.

Shany Biton

Sheina Gendelman

The study was conducted in collaboration with Antônio Ribeiro from the Uppsala University, Sweden and Gabriela Miana, Carla Moreira, Antonio Luiz Ribeiro from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The study was published in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health

Check out our AI Brochure

One Hundred Sunrises a Day is a public art exhibition showcasing the work of 12 Israeli artists of Ethiopian descent who deal with social issues through a variety of artistic techniques. The artists originate from the Jewish community of Ethiopians who have made Aliyah over the years. It is currently on display in the new gallery at the entrance to the Ullman Building, on the main campus of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and will be open, free of charge, through the end of November 2021.

The exhibition was originally shown in Haifa this past spring, across 100 municipal billboards as part of the “Cultural Touches” program – a series of events produced by the Haifa-Boston Connection. In August 2021, the exhibition opened at the Technion in partnership with Tikva Israelit as a way of bringing art into the public space and making it accessible.

“Israeli Hope” is an initiative of Israel’s President; the program aims to establish partnerships among the four main sectors that comprise Israeli society: secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab-Israeli. “100 Sunrises a Day” is part of “Israeli Hope in Academia“, an initiative to increase diversity and representation of different populations, while creating a common space for all of them and preserving each group’s unique identity.

נשיא הטכניון פרופ' אורי סיון בסיור בתערוכה.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan taking a tour of the exhibition

“Promoting multicultural activity on campus and increasing awareness of diversity”

According to Efi Barkai Goral, who heads Tikva Israelit at the Technion, “the program is intended to promote multicultural activity on campus and increase awareness of diversity and cultural competence. The exhibition itself invites us to look at life through the lens of the other. With this in mind, and as part of staff training on cultural competence, meetings are held between artists and faculty members to stimulate thinking and to create dialogue about the place of others within us, as an organization and as individuals.”

Valeria Geselev, curator of the exhibition, said: “In March 2021, my city, Haifa, changed not only because art appeared in spaces dedicated for advertisements. The city changed because it gave room and attention to faces and voices that do not take up space in the public sphere… This is an exhibition that was born on the street, and which expresses the influence of art in the public space. It is not obvious that an academic institution chooses to put on such an exhibition. In doing so, a platform is given to narratives that have not yet been heard.”

Curator Valeria Geselev with two paintings by Haifa-based artist Shimon Wanda: “Lucky” (left) and “Secrets”

Eden Yilma, one of the featured artists, presented her work during a recent Technion tour and spoke of the importance for her of showing art in public spaces, and specifically exhibiting her work at the Technion – a space where academia meets dialogue; she also spoke of the opportunity to interact with the future generation. She presents her compelling story and trajectory as a third-generation Ethiopian in Israel, and her identity search through art.

Story by Deborah Dwek

SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind today’s global coronavirus pandemic, spreads primarily by inhalation of virus-laden aerosols at both short and long ranges, and a comprehensive new assessment of respiratory viruses finds that many others probably do as well. SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, influenza, measles, and the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold can all spread via aerosols that can build up in indoor air and linger for hours, an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers has reported in a review published in Science.

Over the last century and at the beginning of this pandemic, it was widely believed that respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, mainly spread through droplets produced in coughs and sneezes of infected individuals or through touching contaminated surfaces. However, droplet and fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 fails to account for the numerous superspreading events observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, or the much higher transmission that occurs indoors versus outdoors.

Airborne transmission is the most likely route, not surface contacts or contact with large droplets

Motivated by a desire to understand the factors leading to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from Taiwan, the U.S., and Israel sought to identify as clearly as possible how the coronavirus and other respiratory viruses spread. For example, the team reviewed numerous studies of superspreading events observed during the COVID pandemic, and found the studies consistently showed that airborne transmission is the most likely transmission route, not surface contacts or contact with large droplets. One common factor at these superspreading events was the shared air people inhaled in the same room. Many were linked to crowded locations, exposure durations of one hour or more, poor ventilation, vocalization, and lack of properly worn masks.

The researchers also reviewed evidence collected from many other types of studies — air sampling, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based and/or cell culture studies, epidemiological analysis, laboratory and clinical studies, and modeling work — and concluded that airborne transmission is a major, or even dominant transmission pathway for most respiratory diseases, not just COVID-19. “Transmission through inhalation of virus-laden aerosols has been long underappreciated. It is time to revise the conventional paradigms by implementing aerosol precautions to protect the public against this transmission route”, said Chia C. Wang, director of the Aerosol Science Research Center and an aerosol physical chemist at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan, who led the review.

Prevailing paradigms about respiratory disease transmission date back as much as a century, the team noted. Airborne transmission was paternalistically dismissed in the early 1900s by prominent public health figure Charles Chapin due to a concern that mentioning transmission by air would scare people into inaction and displace hygiene practices. An unsupported assumption that erroneously equated infections at close range with droplet transmission has shaped the current paradigm for controlling respiratory virus transmission. However, “this assumption neglects the fact that aerosol transmission also occurs at short distances, because the concentration of exhaled aerosols is higher when one is closer to the infected person emitting them”, said Kim Prather, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and an aerosol chemist who co-led the review.

Respiratory aerosols are formed by expiratory activities, such as breathing, talking, singing, shouting, coughing, and sneezing. Before COVID-19, the traditional size cut-off between aerosols which float like smoke and droplets which drop had been set at 5 µm, however, 100 µm is a more appropriate size distinction. This updated size better represents the largest particles that can remain suspended in still air for more than five seconds (from a height of 1.5 meters), travel beyond one meter from the infected person, and be inhaled. The physical size predominantly determines how long they can stay suspended in the air, how far they can reach, whether they are inhalable, and how deep they can enter into the respiratory tract if inhaled. “The majority of aerosols produced by respiratory activities are smaller than 5 µm, which allows them to travel deep into the bronchiolar and alveolar regions and deposit there. Studies find that viruses are more enriched in aerosols smaller than 5 µm”, said Prof. Josué Sznitman, an associate professor and head of the Biofluids Laboratory at the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

Prof. Josué Sznitman

Another distinct behavior of aerosols that should be taken into serious consideration is their capacity to be influenced by airflow and ventilation. Ensuring sufficient ventilation rates, filtration, and avoiding recirculation help reduce airborne transmission of infectious virus-laden aerosols. “Monitoring CO2 with portable meters helps verify that ventilation is sufficient, and implementing portable HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) purifiers and upper room UV disinfection systems also help reduce the concentrations of virus-laden aerosols”, added Jose-Luis Jimenez, an atmospheric aerosol chemist of the University of Colorado Boulder. On the other hand, the plexiglass barriers commonly used to block droplet spray from coughs and sneezes in indoor spaces may “impede proper ventilation and create higher exposures for some people,” said Linsey Marr of Virginia Tech, who has studied airborne transmission of pathogens for years. “They are not recommended except for brief, face-to-face transactions, but even then, masks are better because they help remove aerosols, while barriers just divert them.”

With the surge in infections caused by the Delta variant and the increasing occurrence of “COVID-19 breakthrough cases” (infections among people who have been fully vaccinated), many governments and national disease control agencies have resumed universal masking in public. Universal masking is an effective and economic way to block virus-laden aerosols, reported in the review. However, “we need to consider multiple barriers to transmission such as vaccination, masking, and ventilation. One single strategy is unlikely to be strong enough to eliminate transmission of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants”, added Seema S. Lakdawala, a virologist of the University of Pittsburgh.

Health benefits extend well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

As the evidence for airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has increased over time and become particularly strong, agencies have taken notice. In April and May 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged inhalation of virus-laden aerosols as a main route in spreading COVID-19 at both short and long ranges. This means that to mitigate transmission and end this pandemic, decision makers should consider implementing aerosol precautionary measures, including universal masking with attention to mask fit, improving ventilation rates in indoor spaces, avoiding recirculation of contaminated indoor air, installation of air filtration such as HEPA purifiers that can effectively remove airborne particles, and using UV disinfection lamps. “What are traditionally called droplet precautions are not replaced wholesale, but instead are modified, expanded and deployed in a more effective manner in accordance with actual transmission mechanisms,” noted Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of Columbia who studies societal challenges in COVID-19 pandemic. Having the correct mental model of transmission of this disease and other respiratory diseases will also allow ordinary people to make better decisions in everyday situations and administrators and officials to create better guidelines and working and socializing environments even after the pandemic, she added.

This pandemic vividly illuminates the importance of the long underestimated airborne transmission route and the necessity of preserving people’s right to breathe clean and pathogen-free air. “What we have learned from this pandemic also lights up the ways for us to make appropriate changes to enter the post-epidemic era,” said Wang. As addressed at the end of this review, these aerosol precautionary measures will not only protect against airborne transmission of respiratory diseases, but also improve indoor air quality and result in health benefits extending well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the Science article here.