Short-term association between COVID-19 related deaths, hospitalized patients and air pollution during the first lockdown in the four largest cities in Germany

Author(s):  
Rik Walsemann ◽  
Peter Neis
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick D. M. C. Katoto ◽  
Amanda S. Brand ◽  
Buket Bakan ◽  
Paul Musa Obadia ◽  
Carsi Kuhangana ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Air pollution is one of the world’s leading mortality risk factors contributing to seven million deaths annually. COVID-19 pandemic has claimed about one million deaths in less than a year. However, it is unclear whether exposure to acute and chronic air pollution influences the COVID-19 epidemiologic curve. Methods We searched for relevant studies listed in six electronic databases between December 2019 and September 2020. We applied no language or publication status limits. Studies presented as original articles, studies that assessed risk, incidence, prevalence, or lethality of COVID-19 in relation with exposure to either short-term or long-term exposure to ambient air pollution were included. All patients regardless of age, sex and location diagnosed as having COVID-19 of any severity were taken into consideration. We synthesised results using harvest plots based on effect direction. Results Included studies were cross-sectional (n = 10), retrospective cohorts (n = 9), ecological (n = 6 of which two were time-series) and hypothesis (n = 1). Of these studies, 52 and 48% assessed the effect of short-term and long-term pollutant exposure, respectively and one evaluated both. Pollutants mostly studied were PM2.5 (64%), NO2 (50%), PM10 (43%) and O3 (29%) for acute effects and PM2.5 (85%), NO2 (39%) and O3 (23%) then PM10 (15%) for chronic effects. Most assessed COVID-19 outcomes were incidence and mortality rate. Acutely, pollutants independently associated with COVID-19 incidence and mortality were first PM2.5 then PM10, NO2 and O3 (only for incident cases). Chronically, similar relationships were found for PM2.5 and NO2. High overall risk of bias judgments (86 and 39% in short-term and long-term exposure studies, respectively) was predominantly due to a failure to adjust aggregated data for important confounders, and to a lesser extent because of a lack of comparative analysis. Conclusion The body of evidence indicates that both acute and chronic exposure to air pollution can affect COVID-19 epidemiology. The evidence is unclear for acute exposure due to a higher level of bias in existing studies as compared to moderate evidence with chronic exposure. Public health interventions that help minimize anthropogenic pollutant source and socio-economic injustice/disparities may reduce the planetary threat posed by both COVID-19 and air pollution pandemics.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 2518
Author(s):  
Ariana Lammers ◽  
Anne H. Neerincx ◽  
Susanne J. H. Vijverberg ◽  
Cristina Longo ◽  
Nicole A. H. Janssen ◽  
...  

Environmental factors, such as air pollution, can affect the composition of exhaled breath, and should be well understood before biomarkers in exhaled breath can be used in clinical practice. Our objective was to investigate whether short-term exposures to air pollution can be detected in the exhaled breath profile of healthy adults. In this study, 20 healthy young adults were exposed 2–4 times to the ambient air near a major airport and two highways. Before and after each 5 h exposure, exhaled breath was analyzed using an electronic nose (eNose) consisting of seven different cross-reactive metal-oxide sensors. The discrimination between pre and post-exposure was investigated with multilevel partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA), followed by linear discriminant and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, for all data (71 visits), and for a training (51 visits) and validation set (20 visits). Using all eNose measurements and the training set, discrimination between pre and post-exposure resulted in an area under the ROC curve of 0.83 (95% CI = 0.76–0.89) and 0.84 (95% CI = 0.75–0.92), whereas it decreased to 0.66 (95% CI = 0.48–0.84) in the validation set. Short-term exposure to high levels of air pollution potentially influences the exhaled breath profiles of healthy adults, however, the effects may be minimal for regular daily exposures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luyi Li ◽  
Dayu Hu ◽  
Wenlou Zhang ◽  
Liyan Cui ◽  
Xu Jia ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The adverse effects of particulate air pollution on heart rate variability (HRV) have been reported. However, it remains unclear whether they differ by the weight status as well as between wake and sleep. Methods A repeated-measure study was conducted in 97 young adults in Beijing, China, and they were classified by body mass index (BMI) as normal-weight (BMI, 18.5–24.0 kg/m2) and obese (BMI ≥ 28.0 kg/m2) groups. Personal exposures to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) were measured with portable exposure monitors, and the ambient PM2.5/BC concentrations were obtained from the fixed monitoring sites near the subjects’ residences. HRV and heart rate (HR) were monitored by 24-h Holter electrocardiography. The study period was divided into waking and sleeping hours according to time-activity diaries. Linear mixed-effects models were used to investigate the effects of PM2.5/BC on HRV and HR in both groups during wake and sleep. Results The effects of short-term exposure to PM2.5/BC on HRV were more pronounced among obese participants. In the normal-weight group, the positive association between personal PM2.5/BC exposure and high-frequency power (HF) as well as the ratio of low-frequency power to high-frequency power (LF/HF) was observed during wakefulness. In the obese group, personal PM2.5/BC exposure was negatively associated with HF but positively associated with LF/HF during wakefulness, whereas it was negatively correlated to total power and standard deviation of all NN intervals (SDNN) during sleep. An interquartile range (IQR) increase in BC at 2-h moving average was associated with 37.64% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 25.03, 51.51%) increases in LF/HF during wakefulness and associated with 6.28% (95% CI: − 17.26, 6.15%) decreases in SDNN during sleep in obese individuals, and the interaction terms between BC and obesity in LF/HF and SDNN were both statistically significant (p <  0.05). The results also suggested that the effects of PM2.5/BC exposure on several HRV indices and HR differed in magnitude or direction between wake and sleep. Conclusions Short-term exposure to PM2.5/BC is associated with HRV and HR, especially in obese individuals. The circadian rhythm of HRV should be considered in future studies when HRV is applied. Graphical abstract


Author(s):  
Azim Heydari ◽  
Meysam Majidi Nezhad ◽  
Davide Astiaso Garcia ◽  
Farshid Keynia ◽  
Livio De Santoli

AbstractAir pollution monitoring is constantly increasing, giving more and more attention to its consequences on human health. Since Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are the major pollutants, various models have been developed on predicting their potential damages. Nevertheless, providing precise predictions is almost impossible. In this study, a new hybrid intelligent model based on long short-term memory (LSTM) and multi-verse optimization algorithm (MVO) has been developed to predict and analysis the air pollution obtained from Combined Cycle Power Plants. In the proposed model, long short-term memory model is a forecaster engine to predict the amount of produced NO2 and SO2 by the Combined Cycle Power Plant, where the MVO algorithm is used to optimize the LSTM parameters in order to achieve a lower forecasting error. In addition, in order to evaluate the proposed model performance, the model has been applied using real data from a Combined Cycle Power Plant in Kerman, Iran. The datasets include wind speed, air temperature, NO2, and SO2 for five months (May–September 2019) with a time step of 3-h. In addition, the model has been tested based on two different types of input parameters: type (1) includes wind speed, air temperature, and different lagged values of the output variables (NO2 and SO2); type (2) includes just lagged values of the output variables (NO2 and SO2). The obtained results show that the proposed model has higher accuracy than other combined forecasting benchmark models (ENN-PSO, ENN-MVO, and LSTM-PSO) considering different network input variables. Graphic abstract


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhan Ren ◽  
Xingyuan Liu ◽  
Tianyu Liu ◽  
Dieyi Chen ◽  
Kuizhuang Jiao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Positive associations between ambient PM2.5 and cardiorespiratory disease have been well demonstrated during the past decade. However, few studies have examined the adverse effects of PM2.5 based on an entire population of a megalopolis. In addition, most studies in China have used averaged data, which results in variations between monitoring and personal exposure values, creating an inherent and unavoidable type of measurement error. Methods This study was conducted in Wuhan, a megacity in central China with about 10.9 million people. Daily hospital admission records, from October 2016 to December 2018, were obtained from the Wuhan Information center of Health and Family Planning, which administrates all hospitals in Wuhan. Daily air pollution concentrations and weather variables in Wuhan during the study period were collected. We developed a land use regression model (LUR) to assess individual PM2.5 exposure. Time-stratified case-crossover design and conditional logistic regression models were adopted to estimate cardiorespiratory hospitalization risks associated with short-term exposure to PM2.5. We also conducted stratification analyses by age, sex, and season. Results A total of 2,806,115 hospital admissions records were collected during the study period, from which we identified 332,090 cardiovascular disease admissions and 159,365 respiratory disease admissions. Short-term exposure to PM2.5 was associated with an increased risk of a cardiorespiratory hospital admission. A 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 (lag0–2 days) was associated with an increase in hospital admissions of 1.23% (95% CI 1.01–1.45%) and 1.95% (95% CI 1.63–2.27%) for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, respectively. The elderly were at higher PM-induced risk. The associations appeared to be more evident in the cold season than in the warm season. Conclusions This study contributes evidence of short-term effects of PM2.5 on cardiorespiratory hospital admissions, which may be helpful for air pollution control and disease prevention in Wuhan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-360
Author(s):  
Ahmad M. Al-Taee ◽  
Kahee A. Mohammed ◽  
Gebran W. Khneizer ◽  
Brent A. Neuschwander-Tetri

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document