Exposure to ambient air pollutants is associated with an increased incidence of hyperuricemia: A longitudinal cohort study among Chinese government employees.

Background: It is widely recognized that ambient air pollution can induce various detrimental health outcomes. However, evidence linking ambient air pollutants and hyperuricemia incidence is scarce.
Objectives: To assess the association between long-term air pollution exposure and the risk of hyperuricemia.
Methods: In this study, a total of 5854 government employees without hyperuricemia were recruited and followed up from January 2018 to June 2021 in Hunan Province, China. Hyperuricemia was defined as serum uric acid (SUA) level of >420 μmol/L for men and >360 μmol/L for women or use of SUA-lowering medication or diagnosed as hyperuricemia during follow-up. Data from local air quality monitoring stations were used to calculate individual exposure levels of PM ₁₀ , PM _2.5 , SO ₂ and NO ₂ by inverse distance weightingn (IDW) method. Cox proportional hazard model was applied to evaluate the causal relationships between air pollutant exposures and the risk of hyperuricemia occurrence after adjustment for potential confounders and meanwhile, restricted cubic spline was used to explore the dose-response relationships.
Results: The results indicated that exposures to PM ₁₀ (hazard ratio, HR = 1.042, 95% conficence interal, 95% CI: 1.028, 1.057), PM _2.5 (HR = 1.204, 95% CI: 1.141, 1.271) and NO ₂ (HR = 1.178, 95% CI: 1.125,1.233) were associated with an increased HR of hyperuricemia. In addition, a nonlinear dose-response relationship was found between PM ₁₀ exposure level and the HR of hyperuricemia (p for nonlinearity = 0.158) with a potential threshold of 50.11 μg/m ³ . Subgroup analysis demonstrated that participants usually waking up at night and using natural ventilation were more vulnerable to the exposures of PM ₁₀ , PM _2.5 , NO ₂ , and SO ₂ .
Conclusion: Long-term exposures to ambient PM ₁₀ , PM _2.5 and NO ₂ are associated with an increased incidence of hyperuricemia among Chinese government employees.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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