Article based on Lorraine Vélez Torres’s doctoral thesis is published in the PeerJ journal
- Post by: Humberto Cavallin
- March 25, 2022
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An article titled: Hurricane María drives increased indoor proliferation of filamentous fungi in San Juan, Puerto Rico: a two-year culture-based approach, was just published in the PeerJ journal, as announced by the RCMI Center for Collaborative Research in Health Disparities. The article is based on the doctoral thesis of Lorraine Vélez Torres, a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Microbiology of the School of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. A thesis which was worked under the mentorship of Dr. Benjamin Bolaños, at the Department of Microbiology and Medical Zoology. Researchers from the UPR School of Architecture, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Larkin University in Miami collaborated in the study. Notable researchers who worked on the article include Filipa Godoy-Vitorino, Felix E. Rivera-Mariani, Juan P. Maestre, Kerry Kinney and Humberto Cavallin. The work done for the study consisted of taking air samples from the inside of houses in a community in the city of San Juan to measure levels of fungal spores after Hurricane María. This work shows the importance of proper management of debris after a hurricane to avoid the amplification of fungi inside homes. It also highlights the need for daily reports of fungi levels as an index of indoor air quality in homes and buildings in Puerto Rico.