BackgroundThe prevalence of atopic dermatitis (AD) in children has increased substantially in China over past decades. The ongoing rise in the prevalence stresses the important role of the environmental factors in the pathogenesis of AD. However, studies evaluating the effects of air pollution on AD in children are scarce.ObjectiveTo quantitatively assess the association between air pollution and outpatient visits for AD in children.MethodsIn this time-series study, we collected 214,747 children of AD from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2019 through the electronic data base in the Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University. The number of daily visits was treated as the dependent variable, and generalized additive models with a Poisson like distribution were constructed, controlling for relevant potential confounders and performing subgroup analyses.ResultsEach 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2 and each 1 mg/m3 increase in CO concentrations was significantly associated with a 0.7% (95% CI: 0.2, 1.3%), 0.9% (95% CI: 0.5, 1.4%), 11% (95% CI: 7.5, 14.7%), 5.5% (95% CI: 4.3, 6.7%) and 10.1% (95% CI: 2.7, 18.2%) increase of AD outpatient visits on the current day, respectively. The lag effect was found in SO2, PM10, and NO2. The effects were stronger in cool season and age 0–3 group.ConclusionsOur study suggests that short-term exposure to ambient air pollution contributes to more childhood AD outpatient visits in Chongqing, China.

Previous studies have demonstrated that short-term exposure to ambient air pollution was associated with hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases, but the evidence of its effects on acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in East Asian countries is limited and inconsistent. We aimed to investigate the association between air pollution and AMI hospitalizations in Chongqing, China. This time-stratified case-crossover study included 872 patients with AMI from three hospitals in Chongqing from January 2015 to December 2016. Exposures were compared between days with AMI (case days) and days without AMI (control days). Spearman’s correlation coefficient was applied to explore the correlation between air pollutants and meteorological conditions. Conditional logistic regression was used to assess the associations between air pollution exposure with different lag periods and AMI hospitalizations. Stratification analysis was further implemented by sex, age, and season. Hospitalizations for AMI were signifficantly associated with air pollution. All analyzed air pollutants showed lag-specific at lag 0 day and lag 01 day, whereas a 10 μg/m3 increase of average concentrations in PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO was associated with 1.034% (95% CI: 1.003–1.067%), 1.035% (95% CI:1.015–1.056%), 1.231% (95% CI: 1.053–1.438%), 1.062% (95% CI: 1.018–1.107%), and 1.406% (95% CI: 1.059–1.866%) increase in hospitalizations for AMI, respectively. No effect modifications were detected for sex, age, and season. Our findings suggest that short-term exposure to PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO contributes to increase AMI hospitalizations, which have public health implications for primary prevention and emergency health services.