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Frailty Risk in Older Adults Associated With Long-Term Exposure to Ambient PM2.5 in 6 Middle-Income Countries

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-06-23, 03:29 authored by Yanfei F. Guo, Nawi Ng, Paul KowalPaul Kowal, Hualiang Lin, Ye Ruan, Yan Shi, Fan Wu
Background: A series of studies have explored the health effects of long-term exposure to ambient PM 2.5 among older adults. However, few studies have investigated the adverse effect of long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 on frailty, and the results are inconclusive. This study sought to investigate the associations between long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 and frailty in 6 low- and middle-income countries. Methods: We included an analytical sample of 34 138 individuals aged 50 and older from the Study on global AGEing and adult health Wave 1 (2007/2010). Air pollution estimates were generated using a standard methodology derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer observations and Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments from the Terra satellite, along with simulations from the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. A 3-level hierarchical logistic model was used to evaluate the association between frailty index and long-term PM2.5 exposure at 3 levels (individual, province, and country). Results: In rural areas, each 10 μg/m3 increase in ambient PM 2.5 was associated with a 30% increase in the odds of frailty (OR = 1.30, 95% CI: 1.21–1.39) after adjusting for various potential confounding factors. The gender-stratified analysis showed that the association seemed to be slightly stronger in men (OR = 1.31, 95% CI: 1.18–1.46) than in women (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.07–1.36) in rural areas. Conclusion: In a large sample of community-based older adults from 6 middle-income countries, we found evidence that long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with frailty in rural areas.

History

Journal title

Journals of Gerontology: Series A

Volume

77

Issue

5

Pagination

970-976

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing

School

School of Medicine and Public Health

Rights statement

© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com

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