Supervisors info:
Ευαγγελία Σαμόλη, Επικ. Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Κλέα Κατσουγιάννη, Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Κωνσταντίνα Δημακοπούλου, Διδάκτορας,Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
BACKGROUND: Recent epidemiological research investigates associations between exposure to air pollution and neurodegenerative disease, while part of the literature suggests effects on the onset or aggravation of Parkinson's disease (PD). The goal of this study is to assess the association between exposure to regulated air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, PM2.5-10, NO2, NOx, CO, O3
) and PD through a systematic review and meta-analysis.
METHODS: We searched studies, published in English, until September 2017 through PubMed, Google Scholar and conference abstracts. References of identified studies were further searched for relevant literature. We initially identified 92 studies, from which 16 were included in the meta- analyses as they provided relevant effect estimates. We extracted descriptive and quantitative information from each study. We applied random-effects models to combine risk estimates and investigated the presence of heterogeneity between studies. We assessed publication bias through funnel plots and the Egger test.
RESULTS: We identified 9 articles investigating associations with long term exposure to PM2.5, 6 studies for PM10, 3 for PM2.5-10, 6 for NOx, 8 for NO2, 5 for CO and 4 for O3 while 2 reported associations for short term exposure to PM2.5. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that PD was associated with to long term exposure to PM2.5 with relative risk (RR) 1.06 (95% Confidence Inteval (CI): 0.95, 1.19) per 10 μg/m3 increase, to NO2 with RR 1.04 (95% CI:
0.95 , 1.11) per 10 μg/m3, to CO with RR 1.48 (95% CI: 0.95 , 2.24) per
1mg/m3 . Further, PD was associated to short term exposure to PM2.5 with relative risk 1.03 (95% CI: (1.01, 1.05) per 10 μg/m3. There was high heterogeneity between studies for the most of the analyses, mostly attributed to the different populations under study.
CONCLUSION: We found weak evidence for an association between air pollution, mostly pollution originating from traffic, and PD. Although meta- analysis increases power to detect small associations in rare outcomes further research is need to elaborate our indicative associations. The reslts ofsuch an investigation are of public health significance considering the increasing trend in the aging of the population in developed countries.
