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Poor HDL levels linked to ambient air pollution
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Traffic-related air pollution lowers levels of HDL and may increase risk for CVD, according to findings published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.
The study included 6,654 white, black, Hispanic and Chinese men and women aged 45 to 84 years living in the United States.
“This study follows a large, diverse population, and unlike many previous studies on the health effects of air pollution that assumed individuals living in the same city have the same level of air pollution exposure, this study used cohort-focused monitoring campaigns looking at time and place to estimate air pollution exposure for each study participant,” Griffith Bell, PhD, MPH, of the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle, said in a press release. “It is also the first large cohort study to examine the associations between air pollution and HDL particle number.”
The MESA Air study was used to examine the cross-sectional relationship between air pollution and both HDL cholesterol and HDL particle number.
Individual residential ambient fine particulate pollution exposure (PM2.5) and black carbon concentrations were estimated using a fine-scale likelihood-based spatiotemporal model and cohort-specific monitoring for 12 months, 3 months or 2 weeks before examination.
Using the cholesterol oxidase method and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, HDL cholesterol and HDL particle number were measured, respectively, in 2000.
The relationship between air pollution exposure and HDL measures was determined using a multivariable linear regression.
Exposure to traffic-related black carbon for 1 year was significantly linked to lower levels of HDL cholesterol (1.68 mg/dL; 95% CI, 2.86 to 0.5) and was nearly significantly associated with HDL particle number (0.55 mg/dL; 95% CI, 1.13 to 0.03).
Over a period of 3 months, a 5 g/m3 higher PM2.5 was linked to lower numbers of HDL particle (0.64 mol/L; 95% CI, 1.01 to 0.26), but HDL cholesterol was not associated with lower HDL particle numbers (0.05 mg/dL; 95% CI, 0.82 to 0.71).
“Our study helps strengthen the biological plausibility of the link between traffic-related air pollution and CVD,” Bell said in the release. “We’re slowly beginning to understand some of the biology of how that link works.” – by Dave Quaile
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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