ReviewJournal of biological physics2021
Relative humidity in droplet and airborne transmission of disease.
Review in Journal of biological physics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The impact of climate change on airborne and droplet-borne diseases and hospital response measures.Frontiers in public health · 2026Pooled it
- Acute respiratory infection (COVID-19) risk prediction in travelers: A random forest model.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2026Article
- Determining the Environmental and Ecological Factors Associated With Poultry Farm Spillover of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) in British Columbia, Canada.Zoonoses and public health · 2026Article
- Environmental temperature and relative humidity shape post-emission aerosol fate and airborne influenza transmission.Journal of virology · 2026Article
- Spatial-temporal epidemiological characteristics of influenza and its correlation with meteorological factors in Gansu province based on 24 solar terms.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Detection of airborne bovine coronavirus RNA in pen environments and exhaled breath of calves.JDS communications · 2026Article
- Enterovirus D68 in United States wastewater: a longitudinal surveillance study integrating climatic, demographic, and clinical data.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Article
- Assessing antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal efficacy of non-porous materials using small droplet transfer: the simulated splash method.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- The Advanced Integrated Respiratory (AIR) Model: Integration of Air-Liquid Interface Cell Cultures within a Human Airway Model for Inhalation Toxicology.Pharmaceutical research · 2026Article
- The Selective Detection of Individual Respiratory Droplets in Air.ACS sensors · 2026Article
- Weather elements and the risk of tuberculosis incidence in China from 2005 to 2019: a county-level large observational study.Journal of global health · 2026Observational
- Links between influenza epidemics, weather characteristics and all-cause mortality in the Czech Republic, 1982-2020.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Epidemiological trends of laboratory-confirmed influenza cases driven by meteorological factors in Anhui Province, China: a multi-city time-series analysis.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Heat Shock Protein 70 in Cold-Stressed Farm Animals: Implications for Viral Disease Seasonality.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Advancing transcriptomic profiling of airborne bacteria.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Review
- Developing a method to estimate aerosol generation during poultry slaughtering and defeathering in Bangladesh: An experimental study.Building and environment · 2025Article
- Evaluating the Effect of Climate on Viral Respiratory Diseases Among Children Using AI.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Article
- Unraveling the impact of operational parameters and environmental conditions on the quality of viable bacterial aerosols.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Adsorption-Driven Deformation and Footprints of the RBD Proteins in SARS-CoV-2 Variants on Biological and Inanimate Surfaces.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A large number of infectious diseases are transmitted by respiratory droplets. How long these droplets persist in the air, how far they can travel, and how long the pathogens they might carry survive are all decisive factors for the spread of droplet-borne diseases. The subject is extremely multifaceted and its aspects range across different disciplines, yet most of them have only seldom been considered in the physics community. In this review, we discuss the physical principles that govern the fate of respiratory droplets and any viruses trapped inside them, with a focus on the role of relative humidity. Importantly, low relative humidity-as encountered, for instance, indoors during winter and inside aircraft-facilitates evaporation and keeps even initially large droplets suspended in air as aerosol for extended periods of time. What is more, relative humidity affects the stability of viruses in aerosol through several physical mechanisms such as efflorescence and inactivation at the air-water interface, whose role in virus inactivation nonetheless remains poorly understood. Elucidating the role of relative humidity in the droplet spread of disease would permit us to design preventive measures that could aid in reducing the chance of transmission, particularly in indoor environment.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.