Abstract
BackgroundThe short-term effects of particulate matter (PM) exposure on childhood asthma exacerbation and disease control rate is not thoroughly assessed in Chinese population yet. The previous toxic effects of PM exposure are either based on long-term survey or experimental data from cell lines or mouse models, which also needs to be validated by real-world evidences.MethodsWe evaluated the short-term effects of PM exposure on asthma exacerbation in a Chinese population of 3106 pediatric outpatientsand disease control rate (DCR) in a population of 3344 children using case-crossover design. All the subjects enrolled are non-hospitalized outpatients. All data for this study were collected from the electronic health record (EHR) in the period between January 1, 2016 and June 30, 2018 in Xiamen, China.ResultsWe found that exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 within the past two weeks was significantly associated with elevated risk of exacerbation (OR = 1.049, p < 0.001 for PM2.5and OR = 1.027, p < 0.001 for PM10). In addition, exposure to PM10 was associated with decreased DCR (OR = 0.976 for PM10, p < 0.001).ConclusionsOur results suggest that exposure to both PM10 and PM2.5 has significant short-term effects on childhood asthma exacerbation and DCR, which serves as useful epidemiological parameters for clinical management of asthma risk in the sensitive population.
Highlights
The short-term effects of particulate matter (PM) exposure on childhood asthma exacerbation and disease control rate is not thoroughly assessed in Chinese population yet
All subjects are outpatients between zero and 14-year-old, who were diagnosed with asthma exacerbation inthe period from January 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018.The diagnosis of childhood asthma is based on respiratory symptoms including wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness or cough (Additional file 1 Table 1)
Summary of patient information A total of 3106 patients with 4728 cases of acute asthma exacerbation were identified from 16,355 cases of childhood asthma (Table 1)
Summary
The short-term effects of particulate matter (PM) exposure on childhood asthma exacerbation and disease control rate is not thoroughly assessed in Chinese population yet. The previous toxic effects of PM exposure are either based on long-term survey or experimental data from cell lines or mouse models, which needs to be validated by real-world evidences. Asthma is a chronic allergic respiratory disease with a heterogeneous background involving both genetic and environmental factors. In China, the prevalence of asthma was 3.02% in children under 14 years old (95%CI:2.97–3.06%) [2]. Exposure to all ergens in the pollutants is one of the major risk factors of asthma in children [5]. Evidence currently available has shown that many environmental factors, including allergens, airborne irritants, unfavorable weather conditions and
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