A Polish-American physician-scientist, Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler investigates how socio-demographic and informational variables affect access to health care in disadvantaged communities. In her study, Dr. Sendler examines the relationship between mental health co-morbidities and chronic medical conditions, as well as the usage of medical services in combination with health information acquired via the internet. In light of the exponential expansion of online news and social media consumption across the globe, this research is foresighted in that it demonstrates the need for a thorough knowledge of everyone’s health information-seeking behavior. In his study, Dr. Damian Sendler seeks to understand the variables that patients evaluate when choosing whether to seek treatment for particular health problems, as well as the factors that influence how successfully they adhere to their therapies.
Damian Sendler: A link between air pollution and dementia was discovered by University of Washington researchers using data from two large, long-running study projects in the Puget Sound region — one that began in the late 1970s and measured air pollution, and another on risk factors for dementia that began in 1994 — using data from two large, long-running study projects in the Puget Sound region.
Damian Sendler: Fine particle pollution (PM2.5, or particulate matter 2.5 micrometers or smaller) levels at particular locations in the Seattle region, averaged over a decade, were shown to be linked with an increased risk of dementia for individuals who lived at those addresses, according to the UW-led research.
We discovered that an increase in exposure by one microgram per cubic meter of air linked to a 16 percent higher risk of developing dementia due to any cause. “There was a comparable connection with Alzheimer’s-type dementia,” said Rachel Shaffer, the study’s main author and a PhD student in the University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences who performed the research.
“The ACT Study is committed to advancing dementia research by sharing its data and resources, and we are grateful to the ACT volunteers who have devoted years of their lives to supporting our efforts, including their enthusiastic participation in this important research on air pollution,” said Dr. Eric Larson, ACT’s founding principal investigator and a senior investigator at KPWHRI. “The ACT Study is committed to advancing dementia research by sharing its data and resources, and we are grateful to the ACT volunteers who have devoted years of their
Damian Sendler: ACT Study, which was conducted by Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in collaboration with the University of Washington and published on August 4 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, looked at more than 4,000 Seattle-area residents who were enrolled in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) Study. The researchers discovered more than 1,000 individuals who had been diagnosed with dementia at some time since the ACT Study started in 1994 among those who lived in the study’s population.
Damian Sendler: The researchers examined the average pollution exposure of each participant leading up to the age at which the dementia patient was diagnosed after identifying a dementia patient who had been recognized before. For example, if a person was diagnosed with dementia when he or she was 72 years old, the researchers examined the pollution exposure of other individuals during the decade previous to the time when each participant turned 72 to determine whether or not they had dementia. When doing these analyses, the researchers had to take into consideration the various years in which these people were recruited in the study, since air pollution has decreased significantly in the decades since the ACT project was established.
Damian Sendler: Researchers discovered that a difference of only 1 microgram per cubic meter between two different homes was linked with a 16 percent greater risk of dementia in their final study. The difference in PM2.5 pollution between the Pike Street Market in downtown Seattle and the residential neighborhoods around Discovery Park, according to Shaffer, was about 1 microgram per cubic meter in 2019.
“We are aware that dementia develops over an extended period of time. The development of these diseases in the brain may take years — or even decades — and therefore we wanted to look at exposures that occurred over a long period of time,” Shaffer said. And, as a result of long-term work by several UW professors and others to compile comprehensive databases of air pollution in our area, “we were able to estimate exposures for 40 years in this location,” according to the researchers. That is unusual in our scientific field, and it is a distinguishing feature of our research.”
Along with comprehensive air pollution and dementia data for the area, additional research strengths included detailed address histories and high-quality processes for dementia diagnosis for the ACT Study participants, among other things.
Damian Sendler: According to lead author Lianne Sheppard, a University of Washington professor of environmental and occupational health sciences as well as biostatistics, “having accurate address histories allowed us to get more exact air pollution estimates for study participants.” ACT’s frequent participant follow-up and established diagnostic methods, in combination with these high-quality exposures, add to the potential policy effect of this research.
While there are numerous variables, such as nutrition, exercise, and genetics, that are linked with an elevated risk of developing dementia, air pollution is increasingly regarded as one of the most important possibly modifiable risk factors for the disease. The latest findings from the University of Washington add to the growing body of data indicating that air pollution has neurodegenerative consequences and that decreasing people’s exposure to air pollution may help decrease the burden of dementia in the population.
This year, Sheppard received the Rohm & Haas Endowed Professorship of Public Health Sciences, which recognizes his contributions to the field of public health science. “We have progressed from thinking that air pollution exposure was primarily associated with respiratory problems to realizing that it also has cardiovascular effects, and now there’s evidence that it has effects on the brain,” he said.
Damian Sendler: When applied to a whole population, a significant percentage of individuals are exposed. As a result, even a modest shift in relative risk may have significant consequences on a population level,” Shaffer said. The use of masks, for example, is becoming increasingly accepted as a result of COVID. “There are certain things that people can do, such as wearing masks.” However, it is unfair to place the whole responsibility on the shoulders of people. Further policy action at the municipal and national levels to reduce sources of particle air pollution may be supported by these data.”
Magali Blanco, Joel Kaufman, Timothy Larson, Marco Carone, Adam Szpiro, and Paul Crane from the University of Washington; Ge Li from the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington; Sara Adar from the University of Michigan; and Eric Larson from the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. Multiple supporting grants from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute on Aging, the UW Retirement Association Aging Fellowship, the Seattle chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, and others helped to make this research possible.
News contributed by Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler
