Shortly after the COVID-19 blockade went into effect almost exactly a year ago, a wave of new engineering methods were proposed to decompose the virus, including ultraviolet light-emitting robots and drones.
Now, researchers are turning to another approach with the same prefix: an MIT study shows that ultrasound waves at medical imaging frequencies can cause the collapse and rupture of the virus shell and tips in advanced simulations.
Peaks, the component of the virus that attaches to healthy cells, could be vulnerable to ultrasonic vibrations within the frequency used in diagnosis by medical imaging, according to MIT researchers in a press release.
In their simulations, researchers from MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering modeled the virus’s mechanical response. vibrations run through its structure across a range of ultrasonic frequencies.
They found that vibrations between 25 and 100 megahertz trigger the virus shell and spikes to collapse and begin to break in a split second. The simulations showed that the virus would break in air and water at the same frequencies.
New ultrasound-based treatment for COVID-19
While MIT researchers stress that their findings are only preliminary and based on limited data, they say the research indicates that an ultrasound-based treatment could be developed to combat COVID-19.
“We have shown that under ultrasound excitation, the layer and tips of the coronavirus will vibrate and the amplitude of this vibration will be very large, producing strains that could break certain parts of the virus, causing visible damage to the outer shell and possibly invisible damage to RNA inside, “said Tomasz Wierzbicki, a professor of applied mechanics at MIT. “The hope is that our paper will initiate a debate across various disciplines.”
For their simulations, the MIT team used simple concepts of the mechanics and physics of solids to build their computational model of the structure of the virus. Limited data, such as microscopic images of the shell and tips of the virus, were used to inform the model.
Although the exact material properties of the virus ear are unknown, the researchers believe its simulation paves the way for further research into a new treatment for COVID-19.
“We examined the general coronavirus family and now we are specifically examining the morphology and geometry of Covid-19,” Wierzbicki said. “The potential is something that could be great in the current critical situation.”
This treatment could help people who have not or cannot get the vaccine. It could also provide an alternative and security to the error in the unlikely event that new mutations in the virus prevent the immunity bestowed by the various COVID-19 strokes that exist.