Outdoor Air Pollution and COPD-Related Emergency Department Visits, Hospital Admissions, and Mortality: A Meta-Analysis
Abstract
A systematic literature review was performed to identify all peer-reviewed literature quantifying the association between short-term exposures of particulate matter <2.5 microns (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) and COPD-related emergency department (ED) visits, hospital admissions (HA), and mortality. These results were then pooled for each pollutant through meta-analyses with a random effects model. Subgroup meta-analyses were explored to study the effects of selected lag/averaging times and health outcomes. A total of 37 studies satisfied our inclusion criteria, contributing to a total of approximately 1,115,000 COPD-related acute events (950,000 HAs, 80,000 EDs, and 130,000 deaths) to our meta-estimates. An increase in PM2.5 of 10 ug/m3 was associated with a 2.5% (95% CI: 1.6-3.4%) increased risk of COPD-related ED and HA, an increase of 10 ug/m3 in NO2 was associated with a 4.2% (2.5-6.0%) increase, and an increase of 10 ug/m3 in SO2 was associated with a 2.1% (0.7-3.5%) increase. The strength of these pooled effect estimates, however, varied depending on the selected lag/averaging time between exposure and outcome. Similar pooled effects were estimated for each pollutant and COPD-related mortality. These results suggest an ongoing threat to the health of COPD patients from both outdoor particulates and gaseous pollutants. Ambient outdoor concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, and SO2 were significantly and positively associated with both COPD-related…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis, done in people. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.