A prospective study (SCOPE) comparing the cardiometabolic and respiratory effects of air pollution exposure on healthy and pre-diabetic individuals

Abstract

Air pollution is known to be a major risk factor for cardiopulmonary disease, but this is unclear for cardiometabolic disease (e.g. diabetes). This is of considerable public health importance, given the nationwide epidemic of diabetes, accompanied by severe air pollution, in China. The evidence so far remained inadequate to answer questions of whether individuals with cardiometabolic dysfunctions are susceptible to air pollution and whether air pollution exacerbates diabetes development via certain biological pathways. In this manuscript, we summarize the results and limitations of studies exploring these two topics and elaborate our design of a prospective panel study (SCOPE) as a solution. We assessed and compared the health effect of air pollution among pre-diabetic individuals and matched healthy controls through four repeated clinical visits over 1 year. Comprehensive evaluation was made to both health endpoints and exposure. The primary biomarkers were assessed to reveal the impact on multiple biological pathways, including glycolipid metabolism and insulin resistance, endothelial function, and inflammation. Detailed chemical and size fractional components of particulate matter were measured in this study, along with the application of personal monitors. The work should increase our understanding of how air pollution affects individuals with cardiometabolic dysfunction and the underlying mechanisms.

Respiratory Inflammation and Short-Term Ambient Air Pollution Exposures in Adult Beijing Residents with and without Prediabetes: A Panel Study

“…Participant recruitment and study design for the SCOPE study is described in detail elsewhere (Wang et al 2018). Briefly, SCOPE was a panel study launched between August 2013 and February 2015 that enrolled 60 prediabetic participants (6:1 ≤ FBG <7:0 mmol=L) and 60 healthy control participants (FBG <6:1 mmol=L) identified based on the results of their annual health examination in the previous year.…”

“…Hourly concentrations of ambient PM 2:5 , BC, UFPs, Acc particles, and meteorological parameters [temperature and relative humidity (RH)] were measured using instruments located on the roof of an 18-m-high building at Peking University (PKU site, Beijing, China) (Wang et al 2018). The PKU site is located in an educational and residential district without major emission sources nearby, and ambient fine particles during the study period were mainly attributed to industrial and secondary pollution sources (Zhang et al 2013).…”

“…The present analysis was based on a panel study [A prospective Study COmparing the cardiometabolic and respiratory effects of air Pollution Exposure on healthy and prediabetic individuals (SCOPE)] conducted in Beijing, China, that recruited both healthy and prediabetic participants (Wang et al 2018). Prediabetes typically presents with insulin resistance (IR), b-cell dysfunction, and high levels of fasting blood glucose (FBG), which is associated with high risk for some inflammatory diseases (Donath and Shoelson 2011;Tabák et al 2012;Pickering et al 2018).…”

A Multiple Kernel Learning Approach for Air Quality Prediction

“…Exposure to air pollution can affect everyone, but it can be particularly harmful to people with a heart disease or a lung condition, elderly people, and children. Studies show that long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution or traffic-related air pollution is associated with environmentalcause mortality, even at concentration ranges well below the standard annual mean limit value [1,2]. erefore, building an early warning system, which provides precise forecast and also alerts health alarm to local inhabitants will provide valuable information to protect humans from damage by air pollution.…”

Effects of AIR pollution on cardiopuLmonary disEaSe in urban and peri-urban reSidents in Beijing: protocol for the AIRLESS study

“…The urban and peri-urban clinics were both less than 500 metres away from the nearby monitoring station, and most subjects' residential addresses were in close proximity. The details of the three fixed stations are as followed: One of the urban monitoring sites is on the roof of a six-floor building on the PKU campus, namely the Peking University Urban Atmosphere Environment Monitoring Station (PKUERS)(Wang et al, 2018a), which is located at 500 meters north to the 4 th ring road(GPS coordinates: 39.990, 116.313). The second urban site is located at Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), 11 km southeast from PKU site.…”