A Mathematical Model of Pulmonary Edema Due to COVID-19

Pulmonary edema is a condition where the lung suffers from an acute injury or infection. During pulmonary edema the alveoli (lung air sacs) become more porous, which fills the alveoli with fluid that leads to alveoli cell death. Pulmonary edema is sometimes a deadly sequelae of COVID-19. Researching how to control, understand, and treat pulmonary edema caused by COVID-19 will greatly help in the fight against this novel virus. Using the engineering modeling program COMSOL, we can mathematically model the geometry, biomaterial, and transport of species through a porous media to simulate the pathophysiology of edema. Mathematical modeling gives the flexibility of testing many different stimuli easily (quickly and cheaply) and mechanistically. I have adapted a pulmonary edema model from bacterial infection that considers continuum changes in the fluid fraction in the interstitial tissue with lymphatic drainage. I am changing the existing model to apply to the viral infection of COVID-19. This model will show the change in porosity of the alveoli as an inlet flux to the interstitium that depends on the viral infection. Validation of this COMSOL model will be done by comparing it to data from collaborators and from published experimental studies. When validated we will be including it in the larger work of the SARS-CoV-2 Tissue Simulation Coalition’s COVID-19 lung cellular-tissue response model.