Environmental Exposures, Infectious Diseases, and Cardiovascular Outcomes: Models and Mechanisms in Environmental Cardiology

Recent infectious disease outbreaks including SARS-CoV-2 have provided unprecedented opportunity to explore the role of the environment in spread and outcomes. The role specifically of environmental pollutants including secondhand cigarette smoke and electronic cigarette aerosols along with ambient particulate air pollution and wildfire smoke are being investigated as potential enhancers of infectivity, morbidity, and mortality in COVID-19. As acute and chronic exposures to high level air pollution are common, widespread, and are deadly in their own right, there is a major potential for interactions between environmental pollution and infectious diseases. For example, acute exposure to smoke from wildfires increases morbidity from influenza; there are epidemiological correlations between severe COVID-19 outcomes and air pollution; and there are indications that cigarette smoking, and hypertension exacerbate COVID-19 disease. Moreover, with the emergence of climate change-related alterations in regional weather meteorology including warming and increased wildfires, altered weather patterns may create even more potential for catastrophic effects of infectious diseases and air pollution. As in COVID-19, the cardiovascular system is quite sensitive to the effects of air pollution, and thus, the interactive effects of infectious disease and air pollution on the cardiovascular system (e.g., coagulopathy, stroke, endothelial dysfunction, myocarditis, arrhythmias, etc…) could be dramatically enhanced directly and indirectly (e.g., viral particles are carried by air particles), although to date few mechanisms have been discerned. Thus, this Special Issue will address this emerging, intersection of research on environmental pollution and infectious diseases and their collective effects on cardiovascular toxicology. This solicitation seeks original research and review articles that examine the intersection between infectious agents (e.g., cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, SARS-CoV-2, Chagas disease, etc.) and cardiovascular diseases. Articles that pursue the interaction between infection and environmental exposures on cardiovascular disease outcomes are preferred.