What if the way air pollution affects your heart starts at the cellular level?
A new study led by PhD student Nicholas Pellegrino and co-authored by faculty member Dr. Chia-Ling Kuo suggests that cellular aging may help explain the link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. The findings, recently published in Science of The Total Environment, add to growing evidence on how environmental exposures shape long-term health.
The study analyzed data from more than 38,000 UK Biobank participants who were followed for an average of 13 years. The researchers measured exposure to fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5), created an index of cellular senescence from 94 blood proteins, and tracked who went on to develop atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Higher PM2.5 exposure was associated with higher levels of the senescence index, and higher levels of the index were associated with about a 13% greater risk of cardiovascular disease per standard deviation increase. The index accounted for roughly 5.5% of the connection between air pollution and heart disease. That is a modest share, but it points to a possible biological pathway.
Air pollution is one of the world’s leading environmental health problems and is estimated to contribute to millions of cardiovascular deaths each year. This is among the first population-based studies to examine senescence-related biomarkers as a link between the two. More research is needed to confirm the findings and to inform targeted prevention efforts.
Congratulations to Nicholas Pellegrino on the publication of this first-author paper. His work, alongside co-authors Breno S. Diniz, Ying Zhou, Richard H. Fortinsky, George A. Kuchel, Doug Brugge, and Dr. Kuo, contributes to a growing body of research on how environmental factors influence healthy aging.