November 2, 2024

New Study Links Traffic Pollution to More Signs of Alzheimer’s in Brain

Current research study reveals that increased exposure to traffic-related air contamination is connected to a higher probability of amyloid plaques in the brain, associated with Alzheimers illness, recommending environmental factors might contribute to Alzheimers in genetically untouched individuals.According to a study recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, individuals exposed to higher levels of traffic-related air pollution were found to have actually increased levels of amyloid plaques in their brains, a hallmark of Alzheimers disease, observed post-mortem. People with 1 µg/ m3 greater PM2.5 exposure in the year before death were almost twice as likely to have higher levels of plaques, while those with greater direct exposure in the 3 years before death were 87% more most likely to have higher levels of plaques.Genetic Factors and Environmental InfluencesResearchers also looked at whether having the main gene version associated with Alzheimers illness, APOE e4, had any impact on the relationship in between air pollution and indications of Alzheimers in the brain.”This suggests that environmental aspects such as air contamination might be a contributing element to Alzheimers in clients in which the disease can not be discussed by genes,” Huels said.A constraint of the study is that researchers just had the home addresses of people at the time of their death for measuring air contamination, so its possible that contamination exposure may have been misclassified.