Increased exposure to air pollution drives risk of inflammatory arthritis

Increased air pollution has been linked with rise in risk of autoimmune diseases according to a twin studyTwo abstracts presented by Dr Giovanni Adami at the 2022 EULAR Congress looked at the issue of environmental exposures and their role in disease developmentParticulate matter PM is defined as everything in the air that is not a gas and includes a variety of chemicals and materials some of which can be toxicData from over 80000 people in a retrospective observational study in Italy found a positive association between PM levels measured at local airquality stations and the risk of autoimmune diseasesIn fact every 10 micrograms per cubic metre increase in PM10 concentration was associated with an incremental 7 per cent risk of having autoimmune diseaseExposure to PM10 above 30 micrograms per cubic metre and PM25 above 20 micrograms per cubic metre was associated with 12 per cent and 13 per cent higher risks of autoimmune disease respectivelyWhen broken down by individual diseases exposure to PM10 was associated with an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis RA but no other autoimmune diseases whereas exposure to high levels of PM25 was associated with an increased risk of RA and inflammatory bowel diseaseOverall chronic exposure to particulate air pollution above the threshold for human protection was associated with a 10 per cent higher risk of developing immunemediated diseasesIn a separate study the same team looked at the association between longterm exposure to PM and osteoporosis in almost 60000 women at high risk of fractureThe results showed that exposure to PM25 was negatively associated with low bone mass at the top of the thigh bone and lumbar spineChronic exposure above 25 micrograms per cubic metre for PM25 and 30 micrograms per cubic metre for PM10 was associated with a 16 per cent and 15 per cent higher risk of having osteoporotic bone mass scores at any siteThe researchers concluded that longterm exposure to air pollution was associated with higher risk of osteoporosisFurther among the RA patients high silica exposure was independently associated with lung abnormalities such as interstitial lung disease and mediastinal lymphadenopathyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever