Abstract
The association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is currently unclear, especially in Beijing, a city with severe air pollution. Our study aimed to explore the relationship between short-term outdoor exposure to PM2.5 and RA outpatient visits using a time-series analysis in Beijing. We used the Beijing’s Medical Claims for Employees database to identify patients with RA in 2010–2012. A generalized additive model with a Poisson link was used to estimate the percentage change in RA outpatient visits after the PM2.5 concentration increased by 10 μg/m3. From January 1, 2010, to June 30, 2012, a total of 541,061 RA outpatient visits were identified. During the study period, the average daily (standard deviation) concentration of PM2.5 was 99.5 (75.3) µg/m3. A 10 µg/m3 increase in PM2.5 concentration was correlated with a 0.21% (95% CI, 0.18–0.23%) increase in outpatient visits for RA on the same day. A significant association for the cumulative effect of PM2.5 was found, and the largest significant association was observed for a lag of 0–3 days (0.26%; 95% CI, 0.23–0.29%). Stratified analyses revealed that females (0.29%, 95% CI: 0.26–0.33%) and 18–65 years old patients (0.29%, 95% CI: 0.25–0.32%) were most susceptible to the effects of PM2.5 exposure. The current findings showed that short-term exposure to PM2.5 was followed by an increase in the number of outpatient visits for RA in Beijing. Future studies should investigate the mechanisms underlying this association.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available because the dataset belongs to the government, but they are available from the corresponding author upon a reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Menghe Tian for editing our manuscript and Dr. Yongchen Ma for editing our figure.
Funding
This work was supported by the Key Project of Natural Science Funds of China (No. 81230066), the National Natural Science Fund Projects of China (No. 81473043) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFC2008800 and 2020YFC2008801).
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HY and SS contributed to the study concept. HY and SS had full access to all the data in this study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data. CH and WJ1 performed the data analysis and drafted the manuscript. WM and WS contributed to the statistical analysis and the creation of the tables. WJ2 and YH revised the draft critically for important intellectual content. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Chen, H., Wu, J., Wang, M. et al. Association between ambient fine particulate matter and adult outpatient visits for rheumatoid arthritis in Beijing, China. Int J Biometeorol 67, 149–156 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02393-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02393-0