Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jul 1;11(1):3280.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17131-6.

High-altitude populations need special considerations for COVID-19

Arnar Breevoort  1   2 , Giovanni A Carosso  1   3 , Mohammed A Mostajo-Radji  4   5   6   7
Affiliations

High-altitude populations need special considerations for COVID-19

Arnar Breevoort et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

The atmospheric pressure that decreases with altitude affects lung physiology. However, these changes in physiology are not usually considered in ventilator design and testing. We argue that high altitude human populations require special attention to access the international supply of ventilators.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

M.A.M.-R. is the Bolivian Science, Technology and Innovation Ambassador and leads the Bolivian COVID-19 response team. The authors declare no other conflict of interest.

References

    1. Beall CM. Andean, Tibetan, and Ethiopian patterns of adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia. Integr. Comp. Biol. 2006;46:18–24. doi: 10.1093/icb/icj004. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Truog RD, et al. The toughest triage — allocating ventilators in a pandemic. N. Engl. J. Med. 2020;382:1973–1975. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2005689. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Nkengasong J. Let Africa into the market for COVID-19 diagnostics. Nature. 2020;580:565. doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-01265-0. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hoffmann M, et al. SARS-CoV-2 cell entry depends on ACE2 and TMPRSS2 and is blocked by a clinically proven protease inhibitor. Cell. 2020;181:271–280. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.052. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Qi F, et al. Single cell RNA sequencing of 13 human tissues identify cell types and receptors of human coronaviruses. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2020;526:135–140. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2020.03.044. - DOI - PMC - PubMed