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Climate and air pollution exposure are associated with thyroid function parameters: a retrospective cross-sectional study

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Abstract

Objectives

There are still controversies about the impact of climatic and environmental factors on thyroid function parameters in healthy populations. We investigated the relationships between climate, air pollution exposure, and thyroid function fluctuations.

Methods

We retrospectively reviewed 327,913 individuals attending routine health checks from December 2013 to December 2018. We analyzed the associations between thyroid function and climatic factors using Spearman’s correlation analysis. We explored the relationships between thyroid function and air pollution exposure using multiple linear regression analysis, after adjusting for age, sex, season, and outdoor temperature. We also performed subgroup analyses by age and sex and sensitivity analyses of different anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody status.

Results

Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and free triiodothyronine (FT3) were negatively associated with outdoor temperature (r = − 0.66, P < 0.001; r = − 0.55, P < 0.001), while free thyroxine (FT4) and FT4/FT3 were positively associated with temperature (r = 0.35, P < 0.001; r = 0.79, P < 0.001). An increase of 10 μg/m3 in fine particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5) was associated with a decrease of 0.12 pmol/L in FT4 and an increase of 0.07 pmol/L in FT3 (both P < 0.01). FT4/FT3 was significantly negatively associated with PM2.5 (coefficient: − 0.06, P < 0.01). These results remained robust in hierarchical analyses and sensitivity analyses.

Conclusions

Thyroid function parameters are associated with climate and air pollution exposure. These factors may influence variations in thyroid function. Our results also highlight the importance of public health interventions to reduce air pollution.

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Data availability statement

Data will be available if applied to the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

TSH:

Thyroid-stimulating hormone

FT3:

Free triiodothyronine

FT4:

Free thyroxine

TPOAb:

Anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody

PM2.5:

Fine particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm

PM10:

Fine particulate matter ≤ 10 μm

SO2:

Sulfur dioxide

CO:

Carbon monoxide

NO2:

Nitrogen dioxide

O3_8h:

8-H mean ozone

CI:

Confidence interval

CV:

Coefficients of variation

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the fund of the Sichuan Provincial Health Department (17PJ514), Sichuan Science and Technology Department (2018SZ0112 and 2020YFS0096), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81902142).

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Author notes

  1. Y. Zeng and H. He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Laboratory Medicine, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37, Guoxue Lane, Chengdu, China

    Y. Zeng, H. He, X. Wang & M. Zhang

  2. Department of Endocrine and Metabolism, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37, Guoxue Lane, Chengdu, China

    Z. An

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Correspondence to M. Zhang or Z. An.

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Research involving human participants and/or animals

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of West China Hospital, Sichuan University (Approval No: 101 (2019)).

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No informed consent was required because the data were collected from the hospital information system for analysis retrospectively.

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Zeng, Y., He, H., Wang, X. et al. Climate and air pollution exposure are associated with thyroid function parameters: a retrospective cross-sectional study. J Endocrinol Invest 44, 1515–1523 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-020-01461-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-020-01461-9

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