Abstract:
Background Air pollution is one of the research hotspots in public health. Ophthalmoxerosis is an ocular surface disease with the highest incidence in this category, but its relationship with air particulate pollutants is still unclear.
Objective This study quantitatively estimates the associations of daily concentrations of ambient PM2.5 and PM10 with daily outpatient department visits due to ophthalmoxerosis in local residents in Xuzhou.
Methods Air pollutant variables, meteorological variables, and daily ophthalmoxerosis cases in a general hospital in Xuzhou were collected from 2015 to 2019. Poisson generalized additive models were applied. After controlling for confounding factors such as long-term trend, dayof-the-week effect, and meteorological factors, single pollutant models of daily concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 of current day and lag 1-7 days in association with daily outpatient visits due to ophthalmoxerosis in local residents were constructed, and RRs and 95% CIs were calculated. Multi-pollutant models of PM2.5 or PM10 combined with gaseous pollutants (SO2, NO2, and O3) on the day with the strongest effect were also established.
Results A total of 315 806 ophthalmoxerosis outpatient visits were included in this study, with a daily average of 173 cases. The Spearman correlation analysis results showed that PM10 had the strongest correlation with PM2.5 (r=0.90); PM2.5 and PM10 were both positively correlated with SO2, NO2, and relative humidity (P < 0.01) and negatively correlated with O3 and average temperature (P < 0.01). The single pollutant models showed that a 10μg·m-3 increase of PM2.5 and PM10 was associated with 0.46% (95%CI:0.38%-0.53%) and 0.43% (95% CI:0.35%-0.51%) increment respectively for the hospital visits due to ophthalmoxerosis of current day. The effects of PM2.5 and PM10 of lag 4 days were strongest, the excess relative risks were 0.66% (95% CI:0.61%-0.72%) and 0.69% (95% CI:0.62%-0.76%), respectively. In the multi-pollutant models, after adjusting for other pollutants, the estimated values of PM2.5 and PM10 were lower than those in the single pollutant models, and there were still positive correlations of PM2.5 and PM10 daily concentrations with daily outpatient volume of ophthalmoxerosis.
Conclusion The ambient PM2.5 and PM10 are in positive association with hospital visits due to ophthalmoxerosis in Xuzhou.
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