Environment and Health Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, Herestraat 49, O&N I, PB 706, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Centre for Environmental Sciences, UHasselt, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
Environ Health. 2018 Nov 19;17(1):80. doi: 10.1186/s12940-018-0425-7.
Short-term exposure to ambient air pollution triggers acute cardiovascular events. Here, we evaluate the association of exposure to ambient air pollution with two intermediate cardiovascular endpoints: blood pressure and carotid stiffness.
In a one-year panel study, we included 20 healthy volunteers (10 male-female couples aged 59-75 years) with air pollution and health parameters measured every two months at their region of residence (Leuven, Belgium) and twice during two ten-day periods in two locations, one with higher (Milan, Italy) and one with lower (Vindeln, Sweden) air pollution levels (220 observations). We measured blood pressure, carotid arterial stiffness, personal exposure to NO, and ambient concentrations of PM, PM, and NO. We used linear mixed models to evaluate the associations between the health outcomes and the air pollutants.
Compared with Leuven, exposure to pollutants was higher in Milan and lower in Vindeln, with the highest contrast for NO (median 20.7 μg/m (IQR:7.4) vs 65.1 μg/m (9.0) and 4.5 mg/m (0.8), respectively). We did not observe significant associations between either systolic or diastolic blood pressure and variations in air pollution. However, we found significant associations between arterial stiffness and 5 day average exposure to the studied pollutants. The strongest associations were observed for PM with carotid distensibility (DC) and compliance (CC) coefficients, and the young elastic modulus (YEM): 4.3% (95%CI:7.0;1.5) increase in DC, 4.7% (95%CI:7.1;2.3) increase in CC and 4.2% (95%CI:1.1;7.3) decrease in YEM for each 10 μg/m decreases in PM.
Our study suggests that short-term exposure to air pollution results in reductions in carotid elasticity among elderly population.
短期暴露于环境空气污染会引发急性心血管事件。在这里，我们评估了暴露于环境空气污染与两个中间心血管终点之间的关联：血压和颈动脉僵硬。
在为期一年的面板研究中，我们纳入了 20 名健康志愿者（10 对年龄在 59-75 岁的男女），他们的居住地（比利时鲁汶）的空气污染和健康参数每两个月测量一次，在两个地点（意大利米兰和瑞典温德尔恩）的两个为期十天的时间段内各测量两次。我们测量了血压、颈动脉动脉僵硬、个人对 NO 的暴露以及环境 PM、PM 和 NO 的浓度。我们使用线性混合模型来评估健康结果与空气污染物之间的关联。
与鲁汶相比，米兰的污染物暴露量更高，而温德尔恩的污染物暴露量更低，其中 NO 的差异最大（中位数 20.7μg/m（IQR：7.4）比 65.1μg/m（9.0）和 4.5mg/m（0.8））。我们没有观察到血压的收缩压或舒张压与空气污染的变化之间存在显著关联。然而，我们发现动脉僵硬与所研究污染物的 5 天平均暴露量之间存在显著关联。与颈动脉扩张性（DC）和顺应性（CC）系数以及年轻弹性模量（YEM）的关联最强：PM 每降低 10μg/m，DC 增加 4.3%（95%CI：7.0；1.5），CC 增加 4.7%（95%CI：7.1；2.3），YEM 降低 4.2%（95%CI：1.1；7.3）。
我们的研究表明，短期暴露于空气污染会导致老年人群的颈动脉弹性降低。
