AUTHOR=Cobarrubia Antonio , Tall Jarod , Crispin-Smith Austin , Luque Antoni TITLE=Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of Particle Diffusion in Mucus JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=9 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2021.594306 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2021.594306 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=
Mucus is a complex fluid that coats multiple organs in animals. Various physicochemical properties can alter the diffusion of microscopic particles in mucus, impacting drug delivery, virus infection, and disease development. The simultaneous effect of these physicochemical properties in particle diffusion, however, remains elusive. Here, we analyzed 106 published experiments to identify the most dominant factors controlling particle diffusion in mucus. The effective diffusion—defined using a one-second sampling time window across experiments—spanned seven orders of magnitude, from 10–5 to 102 μm2/s. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses identified the anomalous exponent (the logarithmic slope of the mean-squared displacement) as the strongest predictor of effective diffusion, revealing an exponential relationship that explained 89