Reply to Rumrich and colleagues (What does “Parkinson’s disease mortality” mean?)

Thomas Cole-Hunter, Jiawei Zhang, Youn-Hee Lim, Evangelia Samoli, Jie Chen, Maciej Strak, Kathrin Wolf, Gudrun Weinmayr, Emanuel Zitt, Barbara Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz Jöckel, Laust H Mortensen, Matthias Ketzel, Diego Yacamán Méndez, Petter Ljungman, Gabriele Nagel, Göran Pershagen, Debora Rizzuto, Sara Schramm, Bert BrunekreefGerard Hoek, Zorana J Andersen

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Abstract

We thank Rumrich and colleagues for their interest and correspondence concerning our recently published article investigating the effects of long-term air pollution exposure on Parkinson’s disease (PD) mortality in a large pooled European (ELAPSE project) cohort (Cole-Hunter, 2023). In response, we agree that in general a more careful discussion of results is warranted due to the fact that air pollution as a specific risk factor is under-studied within the context of neurodegenerative diseases; hence, studies such as ours need to be performed albeit with some inherent limitations. Prior to our study, only two studies had examined long-term exposure to air pollution with respect to PD mortality, with one detecting significant positive associations for O3 (Zhao, 2021), and another finding a suggestive positive association for PM2.5 (Rhew et al., 2021). Most studies have examined PD incidence with mixed results (see Supplemental Table S1 of our original article (Cole-Hunter, 2023).
Original languageEnglish
Article number107853
JournalEnvironment International
Volume173
Number of pages2
ISSN0160-4120
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Keywords

  • Humans
  • Parkinson Disease

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