Ambient air pollution and depressive symptoms
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Abstract
Background. Depression is among the most common mental health problems. Depression interferes with daily functioning and quality of life. Many factors can contribute to depression and air pollution can initiate or intensify symptoms of depression.
Methods. Case-crossover method was used to study associations between emergency department (ED) visits for depression and ambient air pollution. The statistical analysis was applied for patients of different ages.
Results. Positive and statistically significant results, (communicated as odds ratios), were obtained for exposure to ambient carbon monoxide and ED visits for depression.
Discussion. The presented results support the hypothesis that recent exposures to ambient levels of air pollutants can contribute clinically significant worsening in depression symptoms leading to ED visits. As the results suggest the associations are age dependent.
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2014. Ambient air pollution and depressive symptoms. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e757v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.757v1Author comment
In the paper we present the results related to ambient air pollution (CO) exposure and depression.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Mieczyslaw Szyszkowicz conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables.
Brian H Rowe analyzed the data, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Funding
The authors declare there was no funding for this work.
