Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found a link between traffic-related air pollution and an increased risk for age-related dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found a link between traffic-related air pollution and an increased risk for age-related dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. Their study, based on rodent models, corroborates previous epidemiological evidence showing this association.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of age-related dementia and the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. More than 5 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s disease — a number that is expected to triple by 2050 as the population ages. Health care costs for those patients are predicted to grow from $305 billion in 2020 to $1.1 trillion by 2050.
UC Davis toxicologist Pamela Lein, senior author of the study recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives, said their findings underscore the urgent need to identify factors that contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s to develop effective preventive measures for reducing the individual and societal burden of this disease.
Lein worked with UC Davis atmospheric scientist Anthony Wexler and first author Kelley Patten, while she was a doctoral student in the UC Davis graduate group for pharmacology and toxicology, to develop a novel approach to study the impacts of traffic-related air pollution in real time. Researchers set up a rodent vivarium near a traffic tunnel in Northern California so they could mimic, as closely as possible, what humans might experience from traffic-related air pollution.
Read more at University of California - Davis
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