New JAMA Publication!
Congratulations to Dimitry S. Davydow, MD, MPH, Gregory M. Pontone, MD, MHS, Michael S. Okun, MD, and Melissa J. Armstrong, MD on their publication “Exposure to Air Pollutants and Lewy Body and Parkinson Disease–Related Dementias,” which appears in JAMA Open Network.
Long-term exposure to common air pollutants may increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease-related dementia and Lewy body dementia, according to new research led by University of Florida Health.
The study examined whether exposure to fine particulates in the air and nitrogen dioxide is linked to these dementias.
Researchers found that higher exposure to either pollutant is associated with an increased risk for the conditions. Fine particulates are tiny airborne particles invisible to the naked eye, generated mostly by combustion. Nitrogen dioxide is a reddish-brown toxic gas most often created by burning fossil fuels. “These are pollutants most people are exposed to every day,” said Dimitry S. Davydow, M.D., M.P.H., the Lauren and Lee Fixel Professor at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health. “They come from things like traffic, shipping and other forms of combustion.”
The study, which included researchers at Aarhus University, involved de-identified records from more than 2.1 million people in Denmark between the ages of 65 and 95. Researchers identified people diagnosed with Lewy body or Parkinson’s-related dementia and compared them with control subjects similar in age and sex. The team estimated each person’s exposure to air pollution over a decade before their diagnosis using national registry data, home addresses and data from centralized healthcare records.
They found that even small increases in pollution exposure were associated with higher risk. For every increase in air pollution exposure, the risk of developing Lewy body dementia was nearly four times higher, while the risk of Parkinson’s-related dementia was more than twice as high after accounting for demographic, medical and socioeconomic factors.
Nitrogen dioxide was also associated with increased risk, although the effect was smaller compared to the risk associated with small particulate matter. Even so, higher exposure was still linked to nearly double the risk of developing Lewy body dementia, with a more modest increase observed for Parkinson’s-related dementia.
The researchers noted the association was stronger for Lewy body dementia than for Parkinson’s dementia, though the two conditions are closely related and cause similar changes in the brain.