Background: Evidence suggests that long-term exposure to air pollution may increase the risk of dementia and related cognitive outcomes. A major source of air pollution is automotive traffic, which is modifiable by technological and regulatory interventions.
Objectives: We examined associations of four traffic-related air pollutants with rates of cognitive decline in a cohort of older adults.
Nationwide PM exposure models typically rely on regulatory monitoring data as the only ground-level measurements. In this study, we develop a high-resolution spatiotemporal PM model for the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2019 with dense monitoring data at both regulatory and residential sites. Specifically, we combine publicly-available data from 1843 regulatory monitors with our own set of multiple 2-week measurements at 939 residential locations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Somali American individuals have lower cervical cancer screening rates than the U.S. general population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol
November 2024
Background: Exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with morbidity and mortality, making it an important public health concern. Emissions from motorized traffic are a common source of air pollution but evaluating the contribution of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) emissions to health risks is challenging because it is difficult to disentangle the contribution of individual air pollution sources to exposure contrasts in an epidemiological study.
Objective: This paper describes a new framework to identify whether air pollution differences reflect contrasts in TRAP exposures.
Objective: Evaluate the clinical utility of patient-collected dried blood spots (DBS) in measuring HIV-1 viral load (VL) for monitoring antiretroviral therapy (ART) compared to provider-collected DBS and blood plasma.
Design: In a randomized trial of community-based delivery of ART in South Africa, we assessed performance of: (1) DBS specimens compared to plasma, and (2) participant-collected versus staff-collected DBS specimens, to measure HIV-1 VL.
Methods: The bioMérieux NucliSENS EasyQ HIV-1 v2.
Missing covariate data is a common problem that has not been addressed in observational studies of gene expression. Here, we present a multiple imputation method that accommodates high dimensional gene expression data by incorporating principal component analysis of the transcriptome into the multiple imputation prediction models to avoid bias. Simulation studies using three datasets show that this method outperforms complete case and single imputation analyses at uncovering true positive differentially expressed genes, limiting false discovery rates, and minimizing bias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is associated with adverse birth and developmental outcomes in children. We aimed to describe prenatal PAH exposures in a large, multisite U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Executive function, which develops rapidly in childhood, enables problem-solving, focused attention, and planning. Animal models describe executive function decrements associated with ambient air pollution exposure, but epidemiologic studies are limited.
Methods: We examined associations between early childhood air pollution exposure and school-aged executive function in 1235 children from three US pregnancy cohorts in the ECHO-PATHWAYS Consortium.
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol
April 2024
Background: Statistical models of air pollution enable intra-urban characterization of pollutant concentrations, benefiting exposure assessment for environmental epidemiology. The new generation of low-cost sensors facilitate the deployment of dense monitoring networks and can potentially be used to improve intra-urban models of air pollution.
Objective: Develop and evaluate a spatiotemporal model for nitrogen dioxide (NO) in the Puget Sound region of WA, USA for the Adult Changes in Thought Air Pollution (ACT-AP) study and assess the contribution of low-cost sensor data to the model's performance through cross-validation.
Less than two-thirds of US adolescents are up-to-date with HPV vaccination. While mothers engaged in preventive care are more likely to seek preventive care for their children, current studies on associations between maternal cervical cancer screening (CCS) and adolescent HPV vaccination are needed. We assessed associations between maternal preventive service utilization and adolescent HPV vaccination using electronic health record data from a healthcare system in Washington State.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined associations between prenatal fine particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO), and ozone (O) exposures and child respiratory outcomes through age 8-9 years in 1279 ECHO-PATHWAYS Consortium mother-child dyads. We averaged spatiotemporally modeled air pollutant exposures during four fetal lung development phases: pseudoglandular (5-16 weeks), canalicular (16-24 weeks), saccular (24-36 weeks), and alveolar (36+ weeks). We estimated adjusted relative risks (RR) for current asthma at age 8-9 and asthma with recent exacerbation or atopic disease, and odds ratios (OR) for wheezing trajectories using modified Poisson and multinomial logistic regression, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlacental corticotropin-releasing hormone (pCRH) is a neuroactive peptide produced in high concentrations in mid-late pregnancy, during key periods of fetal brain development. Some evidence suggests that higher pCRH exposure during gestation is associated with adverse neurodevelopment, particularly in female offspring. In 858 mother-child dyads from the sociodemographically diverse CANDLE cohort (Memphis, TN), we examined: (1) the slope of pCRH rise in mid-late pregnancy and (2) estimated pCRH at delivery as a measure of cumulative prenatal exposure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In contrast to fine particles, less is known of the inflammatory and coagulation impacts of coarse particulate matter (, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ). Toxicological research suggests that these pathways might be important processes by which impacts health, but there are relatively few epidemiological studies due to a lack of a national monitoring network.
Objectives: We used new spatiotemporal exposure models to examine associations of both 1-y and 1-month average concentrations with markers of inflammation and coagulation.