Lackland ISC16 – 36 perspective
ASA spokesperson, Daniel Lackland, Ph.D., offers perspective (via Skype) on Abstract 36. He is a Professor in the Neurosciences Department at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina.
“It's very consistent with what other studies have shown with regards to air pollution, that areas that have a bad air quality or air pollution, those are areas that often times are exposed to areas of high risk. We've known about the stroke mill, the Southeastern risk in the United States for some time. That is an area also that's been historically associated with areas of high levels of air pollution. Also, as you said very, very nicely, higher temperatures, higher humidity that have all been put in there. You're seeing this ecological association of air quality and also air pollution along with stroke. We see that. It's also interesting that they have associated with an area that does have a great deal of air pollution, and that would be there in China. This is confirmatory here, and I think we're okay with the associations, particularly these ecological associations.
While there is a reasonable mechanism that would associate this as well, it still is very difficult to attribute the stroke rates specifically to these levels of air pollution. Again, part of that is mostly a part because of this study design in which it's difficult to absolutely say that these people were exposed to these levels of air pollution, not to say that they weren't, and the association is not real. It's just difficult from this particular study and the study design to absolutely attribute it to the air pollution. Leading into another component that we feel is very, very important, that what we do know is things like elevated blood pressure, lack of exercise, cigarette smoking. Those are factors that we know are associated with stroke. We wouldn't want an individual to say strokes are caused by air pollution only, and I don't need to control my blood pressure. I don't need to watch my cholesterol. I don't need to be concerned about my diabetes because we're seeing this association. That's one caution that we certainly want the population as well as health care providers to not think.
This is promising information. It's very, very interesting. It's consistent with previous studies, so it's very, very confirmatory, but it doesn't offset those traditional risk factors of stroke that we have been studying and have very, very good evidence for.”
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