Abstract P146: Environmental Exposures And The Development Of Hypertension In A Prospective US Based Cohort Of Women

Abstract

Environmental exposures including noise and air pollution have been linked to increased hypertension risk, whereas greenspace exposure may decrease hypertension risk. Previous studies have primarily focused on the impact of individual environmental exposures. However, people are exposed to multiple correlated environmental factors simultaneously. We aimed to assess the associations between exposure to multiple environmental exposures and hypertension development in the US-based prospective Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII). We followed 106,409 participants in NHSII from the enrolment (1989) to the diagnosis of hypertension, death, or end of follow-up (2017), whichever came first. We appended multiple environmental factors including air pollution, noise, light at night, temperature, and greenspace at participants’ residential addresses histories (updated every two years). We calculated 24-month average exposure and cumulative average exposure for each exposure. We applied time-varying Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for potential confounders including age, race, lifestyle factors, and individual- and area-level socioeconomic status to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for incident hypertension. We observed 35,155 incidents of hypertension during a follow-up period of 1,947,929 person-years. The average age of the study participants during the follow-up was 45.5 ± 9.3 years. Single exposure models demonstrated positive associations with air pollution, noise, summer maximum temperature, and a negative association with greenness (Table 1).