Ecological study on household air pollution exposure and prevalent chronic disease in the elderly

Abstract

Older people spend most of their time indoors. Limited evidence demonstrates that exposure to indoor air pollutants might be related to chronic complications. This study aimed to estimate the correlation between household air pollution (HAP)'s long-term exposure and the prevalence of elevated hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), obesity, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. From the Global Burden disease dataset, we extracted HAP, hypertension, DM, body mass index, and LDL cholesterol data from Iran from 1990 to 2019 to males and females in people over 50 years. We present APC and AAPC and their confidence intervals using Joinpoint Software statistical software. R software examined the correlation between HAP and hypertension, DM2, Obesity, and high LDL cholesterol. Our finding showed a significant and positive correlation between HAP exposure and prevalence of high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.70), high systolic blood pressure (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.63), and high body mass index (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.57), and DM2 (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.38). The analysis results also illustrated a positive correlation between indoor air pollution and smoking (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.92). HAP exposure might be a risk factor for elevated blood pressure, DM, obesity, and LDL cholesterol and, consequently, more serious health problems. According to our results, smoking is one of the sources of HAP. However, ecological studies cannot fully support causal relationships, and this article deals only with Iran. Our findings should be corroborated in personal exposure and biomonitoring approach studies.