{"doi":"10.1101/2020.09.11.20191692","title":"Biochemical and Biophysical Characterization of Respiratory Secretions in Severe SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infections","abstract":"Thick, viscous respiratory secretions are a major pathogenic feature of COVID-19 disease, but the composition and physical properties of these secretions are poorly understood. We characterized the composition and rheological properties (i.e. resistance to flow) of respiratory secretions collected from intubated COVID-19 patients. We found the percent solids and protein content are all greatly elevated in COVID-19 compared to heathy control samples and closely resemble levels seen in cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease known for thick, tenacious respiratory secretions. DNA and hyaluronan are major components of respiratory secretions in COVID-19 and are likewise abundant in cadaveric lung tissues from these patients. COVID-19 secretions exhibited heterogeneous rheological behaviors with thicker samples showing increased sensitivity to DNase and hyaluronidase treatment. These results highlight the dramatic biophysical properties of COVID-19 respiratory secretions and suggest that DNA and hyaluronan may be viable therapeutic targets in COVID-19 infection.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2020,"id":119576,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":18,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9469,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":381353,"name":"Gernot Kaber","orcid":"0000-0002-6184-5192","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":554762,"name":"Pamela C. Cai","orcid":"0000-0002-0838-0402","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264747,"name":"Elizabeth B. Burgener","orcid":"0000-0001-8969-6232","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":107281,"name":"Graham L. Barlow","orcid":"0000-0001-9335-5414","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292033,"name":"Mark R. Nicolls","orcid":"0000-0001-9473-7422","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":74083,"name":"Michael G. Ozawa","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555360,"name":"Donald Regula","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89074,"name":"Ana Pacheco-Navarro","orcid":"0000-0003-1731-4201","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264757,"name":"Carlos Milla","orcid":"0000-0001-5515-3053","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":381352,"name":"Nadine Nagy","orcid":"0000-0002-2638-2436","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426012,"name":"Samuel Yang","orcid":"0000-0003-1123-9036","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555361,"name":"Stanford COVID-19 Biobank Study Group","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":52015,"name":"Angela J. Rogers","orcid":"0000-0001-6969-6200","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":554763,"name":"Andrew J. Spakowitz","orcid":"0000-0002-0585-1942","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":262482,"name":"Sarah C. Heilshorn","orcid":"0000-0002-9801-6304","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239766,"name":"Paul L. Bollyky","orcid":"0000-0003-2499-9448","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264000,"name":"Michael J. Kratochvil","orcid":"0000-0002-8845-2524","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":69,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:08.313144Z","pmid":"32935110","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}