Background: Particulate matter (PM) exposure may directly affect the pulmonary vasculature. Although the pulmonary vasculature is not easily measurable, differential associations for right ventricular (RV) and left ventricular (LV) mass may provide an indirect assessment of pulmonary vascular damage.
Objectives: We tested whether long-term exposure to PM < 2.5 μm (PM2.5) is associated with greater RV mass and RV mass/end-diastolic volume ratio relative to the LV.
Methods: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis performed cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging among participants 45–84 years old without clinical cardiovascular disease in 2000–2002 in six U.S. cities. A fine-scale spatiotemporal model estimated ambient PM2.5 exposure in the year before CMR; individually weighted estimates accounted for indoor exposure to ambient PM2.5. Linear regression models were adjusted for demographics, anthropometrics, smoking status, cardiac risk factors, and LV parameters, with additional adjustment for city.
Results: The 4,041 included participants had a mean age of 61.5 years, and 47% were never smokers. The mean ambient PM2.5 was 16.4 μg/m3 and individually weighted PM2.5 was 11.0 μg/m3. PM2.5 exposure was associated with greater RV mass [ambient: 0.11 g per 5 μg/m3 (95% CI: –0.05, 0.27); individually weighted: 0.20 g per 5 μg/m3 (95% CI: 0.04, 0.36)] and a greater RV mass/end-diastolic volume ratio conditional on LV parameters. City-adjusted results for RV mass were of greater magnitude and were statistically significant for both measures of PM2.5, whereas those for RV mass/end-diastolic volume ratio were attenuated.
Conclusions: Long-term PM2.5 exposures were associated with greater RV mass and RV mass/end-diastolic volume ratio conditional on the LV; however, additional adjustment for city attenuated the RV mass/end-diastolic volume findings. These findings suggest that PM2.5 exposure may be associated with subclinical cardiopulmonary differences in this general population sample.
1Department of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA; 2Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University, New York, New York, USA; 3Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; 4Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; 5Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 6Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, 7Department of Medicine, and 8Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA; 9Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
Recommended Citation:
Carrie P. Aaron,1* Yana Chervona,1,et al. Particulate Matter Exposure and Cardiopulmonary Differences in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2016-01-01,Volume 124(Issue 8):1166