Air Pollution Raises Dementia Risk in Older Women: Study Finds
Dementia is a growing concern worldwide. Alzheimer’s disease is its common form and now affects nearly 44 million. Past research has identified various factors that may up the risk of dementia. These include smoking, alcohol use, hypertension, mental illness, and genetics. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) uncovered another one: exposure to air pollutants.
The study involved 3,647 65- to 79-year-old women from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS).
The researchers found that older women who live in places with fine particulate matter exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard are 81 percent more at risk for global cognitive decline and 92 percent more likely to develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s.
Their findings suggest that air pollution could be responsible for about 21 percent of dementia cases.
“Microscopic particles generated by fossil fuels get into our body directly through the nose into the brain,” said University Professor Caleb Finch at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and co-senior author of the study.
“Cells in the brain treat these particles as invaders and react with inflammatory responses, which over the course of time, appear to exacerbate and promote Alzheimer’s disease.”
According to Dr Jiu-Chiuan Chen, co-senior author of the study, their findings provide “scientific evidence of a critical Alzheimer’s risk gene possibly interacting with air particles to accelerate brain aging”
“The experimental data showed that exposure of mice to air particles collected on the edge of USC damaged neurons in the hippocampus, the memory centre that is vulnerable to both brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease.”
The researchers say more research is needed to confirm their current findings and the possible causal relationship, and understand how pollutants enter and damage the brain.
The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
Source of this article:
Particulate air pollutants, APOE alleles and their contributions to cognitive impairment in older women and to amyloidogenesis in experimental models
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