Publications by authors named "Astrom C"

Socioeconomic inequalities in the exposome have been found to be complex and highly context-specific, but studies have not been conducted in large population-wide cohorts from multiple countries. This study aims to examine the external exposome, encompassing individual and environmental factors influencing health over the life course, and to perform dimension reduction to derive interpretable characterization of the external exposome for multicountry epidemiological studies. Analyzing data from over 25 million individuals across seven European countries including 12 administrative and traditional cohorts, we utilized domain-specific principal component analysis (PCA) to define the external exposome, focusing on air pollution, the built environment, and air temperature.

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Background: Many studies reported associations between long-term exposure to environmental factors and mortality; however, little is known on the combined effects of these factors and health. We aimed to evaluate the association between external exposome and all-cause mortality in large administrative and traditional adult cohorts in Europe.

Methods: Data from six administrative cohorts (Catalonia, Greece, Rome, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands, totaling 27,913,545 subjects) and three traditional adult cohorts (CEANS-Sweden, EPIC-NL-the Netherlands, KORA-Germany, totaling 57,653 participants) were included.

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Article Synopsis
  • Temperature variability (TV), both intra-day and inter-day, impacts mortality rates, but this study found intra-day variation poses a higher risk to all-cause, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality.
  • Analyzing data from 758 locations over nearly 50 years, the researchers discovered that each increase in intra-day TV correlates with a greater increase in mortality risk compared to inter-day TV.
  • The study recommends further evaluations of the impacts of temperature variability on health, particularly focusing on intra-day fluctuations, which accounted for more than four times the mortality risk compared to inter-day variability.
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Background: We evaluated the independent and joint effects of air pollution, land/built environment characteristics, and ambient temperature on all-cause mortality as part of the EXPANSE project.

Methods: We collected data from six administrative cohorts covering Catalonia, Greece, the Netherlands, Rome, Sweden, and Switzerland and three traditional cohorts in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany. Participants were linked to spatial exposure estimates derived from hybrid land use regression models and satellite data for: air pollution [fine particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), black carbon (BC), warm season ozone (O)], land/built environment [normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), distance to water, impervious surfaces], and ambient temperature (the mean and standard deviation of warm and cool season temperature).

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Short-term exposure to ground-level ozone in cities is associated with increased mortality and is expected to worsen with climate and emission changes. However, no study has yet comprehensively assessed future ozone-related acute mortality across diverse geographic areas, various climate scenarios, and using CMIP6 multi-model ensembles, limiting our knowledge on future changes in global ozone-related acute mortality and our ability to design targeted health policies. Here, we combine CMIP6 simulations and epidemiological data from 406 cities in 20 countries or regions.

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Background: The epidemiological evidence on the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on mortality is still inconsistent.

Objectives: To investigate the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on daily mortality in a large dataset of 620 cities from 36 countries.

Methods: We used daily data on all-cause mortality, air temperature, particulate matter ≤ 10 μm (PM), PM ≤ 2.

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Introduction: The complex interplay of multiple environmental factors and cardiovascular has scarcely been studied. Within the EXPANSE project, we evaluated the association between long-term exposure to multiple environmental indices and stroke incidence across Europe.

Methods: Participants from three traditional adult cohorts (Germany, Netherlands and Sweden) and four administrative cohorts (Catalonia [region Spain], Rome [city-wide], Greece and Sweden [nationwide]) were followed until incident stroke, death, migration, loss of follow-up or study end.

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Background: Evidence on the potential interactive effects of heat and ambient air pollution on cause-specific mortality is inconclusive and limited to selected locations.

Objectives: We investigated the effects of heat on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality and its modification by air pollution during summer months (six consecutive hottest months) in 482 locations across 24 countries.

Methods: Location-specific daily death counts and exposure data (e.

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Coprophagy, the eating of feces, has been documented in a wide range of species but appears to be rare or difficult to detect in deer (Cervidae). Here, we report the first observation of coprophagy in moose , which was recorded using camera collars on free-ranging moose in Norway. The footage shows an instance of allocoprophagy by an adult female moose in spring (May).

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Background: Identifying how greenspace impacts the temperature-mortality relationship in urban environments is crucial, especially given climate change and rapid urbanization. However, the effect modification of greenspace on heat-related mortality has been typically focused on a localized area or single country. This study examined the heat-mortality relationship among different greenspace levels in a global setting.

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The associations between ambient coarse particulate matter (PM) and daily mortality are not fully understood on a global scale. To evaluate the short-term associations between PM and total, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality across multiple countries/regions worldwide. We collected daily mortality (total, cardiovascular, and respiratory) and air pollution data from 205 cities in 20 countries/regions.

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Background: Increased mortality risk is associated with short-term temperature variability. However, to our knowledge, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the temperature variability-related mortality burden worldwide. In this study, using data from the MCC Collaborative Research Network, we first explored the association between temperature variability and mortality across 43 countries or regions.

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Studies have investigated the effects of heat and temperature variability (TV) on mortality. However, few assessed whether TV modifies the heat-mortality association. Data on daily temperature and mortality in the warm season were collected from 717 locations across 36 countries.

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Background: Minimum mortality temperature (MMT) is an important indicator to assess the temperature-mortality association, indicating long-term adaptation to local climate. Limited evidence about the geographical variability of the MMT is available at a global scale.

Methods: We collected data from 658 communities in 43 countries under different climates.

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Background: The association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and mortality widely differs between as well as within countries. Differences in PM2.

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Background: Many regions of the world are now facing more frequent and unprecedentedly large wildfires. However, the association between wildfire-related PM and mortality has not been well characterised. We aimed to comprehensively assess the association between short-term exposure to wildfire-related PM and mortality across various regions of the world.

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This case report demonstrates a small repetition of the case series carried out in Italy wherein inhaled adenosine was administered to patients experiencing severe and worsening coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). The two cases are important not only because they were the first of their type in the United States, but also because both patients were DNR/DNI and were therefore expected to die. Study repetition is vitally important in medicine.

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Background: Exposure to cold or hot temperatures is associated with premature deaths. We aimed to evaluate the global, regional, and national mortality burden associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures.

Methods: In this modelling study, we collected time-series data on mortality and ambient temperatures from 750 locations in 43 countries and five meta-predictors at a grid size of 0·5° × 0·5° across the globe.

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Climate change affects human health; however, there have been no large-scale, systematic efforts to quantify the heat-related human health impacts that have already occurred due to climate change. Here, we use empirical data from 732 locations in 43 countries to estimate the mortality burdens associated with the additional heat exposure that has resulted from recent human-induced warming, during the period 1991-2018. Across all study countries, we find that 37.

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Background: Epidemiological evidence on short-term association between ambient carbon monoxide (CO) and mortality is inconclusive and limited to single cities, regions, or countries. Generalisation of results from previous studies is hindered by potential publication bias and different modelling approaches. We therefore assessed the association between short-term exposure to ambient CO and daily mortality in a multicity, multicountry setting.

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Objective: To evaluate the short term associations between nitrogen dioxide (NO) and total, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality across multiple countries/regions worldwide, using a uniform analytical protocol.

Design: Two stage, time series approach, with overdispersed generalised linear models and multilevel meta-analysis.

Setting: 398 cities in 22 low to high income countries/regions.

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The question of whether, how, and to what extent climate change is affecting health is central to many climate and health studies. We describe a set of formal methods, termed detection and attribution, used by climatologists to determine whether a climate trend or extreme event has changed and to estimate the extent to which climate change influenced that change. We discuss events where changing weather patterns were attributed to climate change and extend these analyses to include health impacts from heat waves in 2018 and 2019 in Europe and Japan, and we show how such impact attribution could be applied to melting ice roads in the Arctic.

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Background: While the COVID-19 outbreak in China now appears suppressed, Europe and the USA have become the epicentres, both reporting many more deaths than China. Responding to the pandemic, Sweden has taken a different approach aiming to mitigate, not suppress, community transmission, by using physical distancing without lockdowns. Here we contrast the consequences of different responses to COVID-19 within Sweden, the resulting demand for care, intensive care, the death tolls and the associated direct healthcare related costs.

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