Aug 2026· Environmental Epidemiology· Vol 10· 0 citations· 43 references
Medicine
TL;DR
Air pollution at least 4 years before hospitalization may increase the odds of hospitalization with Parkinson’s Disease, and reducing air pollution exposure may have long-term effects on PD prevention.
Abstract
Background: Parkinson’s Disease (PD) prevention and treatment are complicated because biological processes underlying PD may begin several years before diagnosis. Previous studies suggest that increased exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air pollution increases PD morbidity. Methods: We analyzed data from 10,366,083 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries (age 65+) in the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2016. We defined “hospitalization with PD” as a beneficiary’s first hospitalization claim with diagnosis codes indicating PD. We linked 10-year exposure histories for PM2.5, NO2, and summer ozone (O3). In a discrete-time survival analysis, we fitted distributed lag models and estimated the lagged associations between air pollution and the odds of first hospitalization with PD. Results: Increased PM2.5 and NO2 exposure at least 4 years before hospitalization was associated with increased odds of hospitalization with PD. Accounting for nonlinearities in exposure-response and 10 years of continuous exposure to PM2.5 at the 90th versus the 0.5th percentile (i.e., 11.8 μg/m3 vs. 3.0 μg/m3), the odds ratio for hospitalization with PD was 1.634 (95% CI: 1.489, 1.792). Similarly, for 10 years of continuous exposure to NO2 at the 90th versus the 0.5th percentile (i.e., 31.7 ppb vs. 3.7 ppb), the odds ratio for hospitalization with PD was 1.474 (95% CI: 1.379, 1.575). Evidence of a relationship between O3 exposure and odds for hospitalization with PD was more limited. Conclusions: Air pollution at least 4 years before hospitalization may increase the odds of hospitalization with PD. Reducing air pollution exposure may have long-term effects on PD prevention.
A marginally increased risk for PD is observed after higher levels of exposure to O 3 (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.00-1.06 per IQR) for exposure 6–16 years before the index date, suggesting a possible role of ozone in PD development even at low exposure levels, which requires further studies.
I. Rumrich, A. Korhonen, L. Frohn et al.· npj Parkinson's Disease· 0 citations
Positive associations between long-term exposure to NO2 and CKD incidence were greater in never smokers than in ever-smokers, and stronger associations among never-smokers suggest that environmental exposures may independently influence kidney health.
Gonzalo Hevia-Ramos, Jiawei Zhang, Stephane Tuffier et al.· Journal of Exposure Science...· 0 citations
Novel evidence is provided that short-term absolute increases in air pollution levels are associated with elevated risks of depression, which is worth consideration in future disease prevention practices.
Yating Ma, Chen-Lu Yang, Lijun Bai et al.· Ecotoxicology and Environmen...· 0 citations
Fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) in the United States has fallen by roughly half since 2000, yet linked health outcomes such as diabetes and childhood ADHD have not improved in parallel. One reconciling possibility is that pollution exposure in early life produces health effects that emerge only years or decades later, after pollution itself has declined. Using two decades of U.S. county-level data, we relate annual PM2.5 estimates to birth outcomes, diabetes prevalence, and small-area estimates of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across short and long time scales. Within counties, changes in low birth weight rates are associated with changes in PM2.5 during the same year and the year prior to birth. At longer time scales, cross-county comparisons show that PM2.5 exposure is associated with higher prevalence of adult diabetes and ADHD after approximately a decade. Together, these patterns suggest that population-level health risks from air pollution may persist over decades, even as pollution itself declines.
R. A. Bentley, L. Ozeryansky· medRxiv· 0 citations
Emerging evidence links air pollution exposure to metabolic dysfunction; however, few studies have examined diabetes-related mortality in relation to ambient air pollutants using high-resolution exposure data at the population level. In the United States, particularly in large and geographically diverse states such as California, exposure contrasts and population heterogeneity provide an important setting to evaluate these associations.
We conducted a matched case–control analysis using California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Vital Records (2010–2021). Diabetes-related mortality events (ICD-10 E11) were identified as primary or contributory causes. Decedents (cases) were geocoded to residential addresses, and one-year rolling averages of fine particulate matter (PM
2.5
) before death were assigned as individual exposures. Each death record was matched to its selected controls based on month and year of birth and race-ethnicity. Controls were identified from the same statewide CDPH mortality database and were eligible because they had not died by the corresponding case’s date of death. Because the number of eligible controls varied across matched strata, controls were randomly sampled within each matched stratum to achieve an overall control-to-case ratio of approximately 2:1 for the study population. The final dataset included 60,824 diabetes-related deaths and 119,053 controls. Exposures were standardized by their interquartile range (IQR) and conditional logistic regression models estimated associations between 1 year rolling average fine particulate matter (PM
2.5
) exposure and odds of diabetes-related mortality, adjusting for age, sex, race-ethnicity, marital status, and education. Nitrogen dioxide (NO
2
) was included as a co-pollutant for confounding control.
PM
2.5
exposure (per 2.65 μg/m
3
IQR increase) was associated with a 18% higher odds of diabetes-related mortality (OR = 1.18; 95% CI: 1.15–1.22) before traffic indicator NO
2
adjustment and showed a stronger association with 21% higher odds (OR = 1.21; 95% CI: 1.17–1.25) after NO
2
adjustment. Health economics analysis estimated that reducing PM
2.5
exposure by its IQR could avoid losses of $31.2 million per 100,000 people.
Higher ambient PM
2.5
exposure was associated with increased odds of diabetes-related mortality in California even after adjustment for NO
2
and other impact factors. These findings support the need for continued strengthening of ambient air quality regulations.
Richy Zheng, Jason G. Su, E. Shahriary et al.· Frontiers in Public Health· 0 citations
With less decline and greater attributable impact than PM2.5, NO2 is increasingly important for measuring morbidity impacts from local sources (i.e., traffic and buildings) in New York City.
A. Spira-Cohen, Rebecca Goldberg, Sarah Johnson et al.· Environmental Epidemiology· 0 citations
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