Schizophrenia affects millions of
people around the world and is a chief contributor to disability. Researchers
are still working to uncover all the risk factors that could facilitate the
development of this condition. A new study suggests that air pollution may be
one of them.
According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), around 20 million people all around the globe live with schizophrenia.
Hallucinations, persistent false
beliefs, disordered thinking, and emotional disconnect chiefly characterize
this mental health condition, and it is one of
the main contributors to disability.
People who live with schizophrenia
also have a higher risk of premature death compared with the general
population.
Still, researchers are unsure of
what causes this condition and why. So far, they argue that the top risk factor
might be a person's genetic makeup, which interacts with environmental factors, such as social isolation and substance
abuse.
The search for risk factors,
however, continues, and a new study from Aarhus University in Denmark may have
identified another one: exposure to air pollution during childhood.
Increasingly, researchers are
showing that poor air quality may contribute not just to the development of
pulmonary conditions — such as lung cancer or asthma —
but also to the deterioration of brain health.
Recently, Medical News Today reported
on a study linking exposure to poor air quality with cognitive
functioning problems, including memory loss.
The current study — whose findings
appear in JAMA Network Open — adds to the evidence that
suggests researchers ought to take seriously ambient air pollution as a risk
factor for brain and mental health.
Pollution increases schizophrenia risk
In the present study, the
researchers analyzed data regarding 23,355 people — all born in Denmark between
May 1, 1981, and December 31, 2002 — whose evolution they followed up from the
participants' 10th birthday "until the first occurrence of schizophrenia,
emigration, death, or December 31, 2012, whichever came first," as they
state in the study paper.
The research team had access to
information on the participants' genetic data — via The Lundbeck Foundation
Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research, or iPSYCH —
as well as the evolution of their mental health, and data on air pollution
during their childhoods.
Of the total number of study
participants, 3,531 developed schizophrenia.
The investigators'
analysis indicated that individuals who had experienced exposure to high levels
of air pollution growing up also had an increased risk of developing
schizophrenia in adulthood.
"The study shows that the
higher the level of air pollution, the higher the risk of schizophrenia,"
says senior researcher Henriette Thisted Horsdal, Ph.D.
"For each 10 micrograms per
cubic meter [referring to the concentration of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide
in ambient air] increase in the daily average, the risk of schizophrenia
increases by approximately 20%," she adds.
Source: Medical News Today
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