Association between air pollution and COVID‐19 disease severity via Bayesian multinomial logistic regression with partially missing outcomes

Abstract

Recent ecological analyses suggest air pollution exposure may increase susceptibility to and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). Individual‐level studies are needed to clarify the relationship between air pollution exposure and COVID‐19 outcomes. We conduct an individual‐level analysis of long‐term exposure to air pollution and weather on peak COVID‐19 severity. We develop a Bayesian multinomial logistic regression model with a multiple imputation approach to impute partially missing health outcomes. Our approach is based on the stick‐breaking representation of the multinomial distribution, which offers computational advantages, but presents challenges in interpreting regression coefficients. We propose a novel inferential approach to address these challenges. In a simulation study, we demonstrate our method's ability to impute missing outcome data and improve estimation of regression coefficients compared to a complete case analysis. In our analysis of 55,273 COVID‐19 cases in Denver, Colorado, increased annual exposure to fine particulate matter in the year prior to the pandemic was associated with increased risk of severe COVID‐19 outcomes. We also found COVID‐19 disease severity to be associated with interactions between exposures. Our individual‐level analysis fills a gap in the literature and helps to elucidate the association between long‐term exposure to air pollution and COVID‐19 outcomes.

The COVID-19-wildfire smoke paradox: Reduced risk of all-cause mortality due to wildfire smoke in Colorado during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Other studies have reported associations between short term exposures to fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) and COVID-19 infection, hospitalizations, and mortality ( Solimini et al, 2021 ; Xu et al, 2022 ; Zhu et al, 2020 ). Associations with long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the United States and Colorado specifically have also been documented ( Hoskovec et al, 2022 ; Berg et al, 2021 ; Bowe et al, 2021 ; Marquès and Domingo, 2022 ; Wu et al, 2020 ). However, limited studies have examined the concurrent effects of the pandemic and WFS on all-cause mortality or for causes other than COVID-19.…”

“…Because of the potential for delayed effects of wildfire smoke or PM 2.5 and COVID-19 infection on mortality, we also considered the rolling period of the previous 11 days in our models. The 11-day period represents the average time between COVID-19 diagnosis and death among Denver residents ( Hoskovec et al, 2022 ). All models included indicator variables for year (where 2010 was the reference year) and day of week (where Sunday was the reference day).…”

“…Stratifying our models by county allowed us to account for differences in NPI implementation and adherence, which varied from county to county during the early months of the pandemic, and differences in case rates across counties. As demonstrated by our previous work, administrative data collected during the first year of the pandemic was prone to missingness ( Hoskovec et al, 2022 ), precluding our use of these data to control for case rates. To assess an overall effect, we estimated a pooled effect for all counties using the inverse variance method with a random effects model using the “meta” package in R ( Balduzzi et al, 2019 ).…”

Model Prediksi Hubungan Polusi Udara Terhadap Kasus Covid-19 Di Kota Tangerang Tahun 2020-2022

“…22 Penelitian di Colorado, juga menunjukkan bahwa peningkatan paparan tahunan PM2,5 pada tahun sebelum pandemi dikaitkan dengan peningkatan risiko hasil COVID-19 yang parah. 56 Pada penelitian meta analisis menghasilkan bahwa infeksi dan kematian COVID-19 di Asia berkorelasi dengan PM2,5, tetapi dengan pengaruh variabel lainnya. 57 Saat PM2,5 beradhesi dengan virus SARS-CoV-2 maka PM2,5 membantu dalam penyebaran virus SASR-CoV-2.…”

Structural equation models for simultaneous modeling of air pollutants

“…Air pollution has become a serious threat to human health (Hoskovec et al, 2022), particularly in urban areas and cities (Antanasijević et al, 2018; Cromar et al, 2020; Dominici et al, 2000). The World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, and several International Organizations and Institutions have proposed policy strategies to reduce air pollution in cities, and its damage to health (EEA, 2022; WHO, 2021).…”