{"id":6603,"date":"2011-02-23T19:03:43","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T00:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?p=6603"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:44:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:44:32","slug":"air-pollution-and-cocaine-among-mi-triggers-analyzed-in-lancet-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/02\/23\/air-pollution-and-cocaine-among-mi-triggers-analyzed-in-lancet-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Pollution and Cocaine Among MI Triggers Analyzed in Lancet Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia} --> <!-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia; min-height: 15.0px} li.li2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 13.0px Georgia} ul.ul1 {list-style-type: disc} -->Air pollution is a weak cause of MI, increasing risk by only 5%, but because so many people are exposed to polluted air the population effect is quite large. By contrast, cocaine increases MI risk by 23 times, but does not have nearly as large an effect on the population. These are two of the key results from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2962296-9\/abstract#\">a study published in the <em>Lancet<\/em><\/a>. The authors analyzed data from 36 epidemiologic studies and calculated population attributable fractions (PAF) in order to perform a comparative risk assessment of multiple MI triggers.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the calculated PAFs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>traffic exposure: 7.4%<\/li>\n<li>physical exertion: 6.2%<\/li>\n<li>alcohol: 5.0%<\/li>\n<li>coffee: 5.0%<\/li>\n<li>air pollution: 4.8%<\/li>\n<li>negative emotions: 3.9%<\/li>\n<li>anger: 3.1%<\/li>\n<li>heavy meal: 2.7%<\/li>\n<li>positive emotions: 2.4%<\/li>\n<li>sexual activity: 2.2%<\/li>\n<li>cocaine use:0.9%<\/li>\n<li>marijuana smoking:0.8%<\/li>\n<li>respiratory infections: 0.6%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The authors concluded &#8220;that acute effects of both participation in traffic and exposure to particulate matter air pollution are substantial contributors to the triggering of myocardial infarction in the population. Improvement of the air we breathe is a very relevant target to reduce the incidence of this disease in the general population.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2962348-3\/fulltext\">an\u00a0accompanying comment<\/a>, Andrea Baccarelli and Emelia Benjamin call the study &#8220;an exemplary piece of epidemiological\u00a0work that furthers our understanding of myocardial\u00a0infarction triggers. Their work stands as a warning\u00a0against overlooking the public health relevance of risk\u00a0factors with moderate or weak strength that have high\u00a0frequency in the community.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Air pollution is a weak cause of MI, increasing risk by only 5%, but because so many people are exposed to polluted air the population effect is quite large. By contrast, cocaine increases MI risk by 23 times, but does not have nearly as large an effect on the population. These are two of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[709,290,245,708],"class_list":["post-6603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-air-pollution","tag-epidemiology","tag-mi","tag-triggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}