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Air pollution and hospital outpatient visits for conjunctivitis: a time-series analysis in Tai’an, China

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Abstract

Conjunctivitis is one of the most common eye-related health problems and significantly influences patients’ quality of life. Whether air pollution increased the risks of conjunctivitis is still unclear. Daily counts of outpatient visits for conjunctivitis, air pollution, and meteorological data during January 1, 2015-December 31, 2019 were collected from Tai’an, China. Generalized additive model with Poisson distribution was used to estimate the relationship between air pollution and visits for conjunctivitis, after controlling for the long-term and seasonal trends, weather variables, and day of the week. The effect of air pollution on visits for conjunctivitis was generally acute and significant at the current day and disappeared after 2 days. The relative risk of conjunctivitis visits associated with per 10 μg/m3 increases in PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and NO2 at lag 0-2 days was 1.006 (95% CI: 1.001-1.011), 1.003 (95% CI: 1.000-1.0107), 1.023 (95% CI: 1.009-1.037), and 1.025 (95% CI: 1.010-1.040), respectively. The impact of air pollution on visits for conjunctivitis varied greatly by individual characteristics. The impact of NO2 was higher in males than in females, with the opposite trend for SO2 and PM2.5. Effect estimates of air pollutants were higher among return visits for conjunctivitis, the elderly, and white-collar workers. Our study highlights that the vulnerable subpopulations should pay more attention to protect themselves from air pollution.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed under the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82003552), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2020A1515011161), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 11618323), and the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (2019B121202002, 2019B121205004, 2019B110206002). YG was supported by the Career Development Fellowship of Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (#APP1107107). SL was supported by the Early Career Fellowship of Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (#APP1109193).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Environmental and Climate Research, **an University, Guangzhou, 511443, China

    Renchao Chen, Jun Yang, Chunlin Zhang, Hao Wang, Bixia Li & Boguang Wang

  2. Guangdong-Hongkong-Macau Joint Laboratory of Collaborative Innovation for Environmental Quality, Guangzhou, 511443, China

    Jun Yang, Chunlin Zhang, Hao Wang, Bixia Li & Boguang Wang

  3. Department of Management Of Hospital Infection, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Shandong First Medical University, Tai’an, 271000, China

    Di Chen

  4. Department of Ophthalmology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Shandong First Medical University, Tai’an, 271000, China

    Di Chen & Yi Wang

  5. Department of Optometry, Shandong First Medical University, Tai’an, 271016, China

    Di Chen & Yi Wang

  6. Institute of Optometry, Shandong First Medical University, Tai’an, 271016, China

    Di Chen & Yi Wang

  7. Department of Ophthalmology, Tai’an City Central Hospital, Tai’an, 271000, China

    Wen-**g Liu & Yi Wang

  8. Division of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, **an University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Peng **ong

  9. School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Shanshan Li & Yuming Guo

Authors
  1. Renchao Chen
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  2. Jun Yang
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  3. Di Chen
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  4. Wen-**g Liu
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  5. Chunlin Zhang
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  6. Hao Wang
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  7. Bixia Li
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  8. Peng **ong
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  9. Boguang Wang
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  10. Yi Wang
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  11. Shanshan Li
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  12. Yuming Guo
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Contributions

Y.G., J.Y., S.L., and B.W. initiated the study. Y.G., Y.W., and S.L. collected the data. R.C and J.Y. performed statistical analysis. J.Y. and R.C. drafted the manuscript. Y.G., B.W., D.C., W.L., C.Z., H.W., B.L., B.W., Y.W., P.X., and S.L. revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Boguang Wang, Yi Wang or Shanshan Li.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was not required for secondary analysis of anonymous data in this study.

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Not applicable (This study does not contain any individual person’s data in any form).

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Not applicable (This study does not contain any individual person’s data in any form).

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya

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Renchao Chen, Jun Yang, and Di Chen are co-first authors.

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Chen, R., Yang, J., Chen, D. et al. Air pollution and hospital outpatient visits for conjunctivitis: a time-series analysis in Tai’an, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 15453–15461 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11762-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11762-4

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