Acute and lag effects of ambient fine particulate matter on the incidence of dyslipidemia in Chengdu, China: A time-series study

High levels of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) might increase the risk of death due to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). As a critical risk factor for CVDs, dyslipidemia can cause CVDs or exacerbate pre-existing ones. This study aimed to investigate whether a short-time exposure to PM2.5 leads to dyslipidemia (HyperTC, HyperLDL-C, HyperTG and HypoHDL-C) in adults. The serum lipid data were provided by the Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital Medical Examination Center. We included 309,654 subjects aged 18-79 between May 10, 2015, and May 10, 2017. An advanced distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) was applied to investigate the acute and lag effects of ambient PM2.5 on the risk of dyslipidemia. This study was also stratified by sex, age, BMI and season to examine potential effect modification. We observed that the associations between an interquartile increase in PM2.5 (43 mu g/m(3)) and dyslipidemia were [relative risk (RR); 95% confidence interval (CI)]: 1.042 (1.013, 1.071) for HyperLDL-C and 1.027 (1.006, 1.049) for HyperTC at lag0 day. The lag effects were found at lag6 day for HyperLDL-C, in lag4-6 days for HyperTC and lag4-7 days for HyperTG. Short-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 was related to dyslipidemia and the effect modification was observed in the subgroup analysis. The female and normal-weight populations were more susceptible to the risks of PM2.5 on HyperLDL-C and HyperTC.

Automated summary

This study found that short-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 may lead to dyslipidemia in adults, particularly an increase in high LDL-C and total cholesterol. This effect was more pronounced in females and individuals with normal weight.