Influence of Socioeconomic Deprivation on the Relation Between Air Pollution and β-Agonist Sales for Asthma

Two-stage Bayesian model to evaluate the effect of air pollution on chronic respiratory diseases using drug prescriptions

“…Naureckas et al (2005) used short acting β 2 -agonists (SABA) prescription as an indicator of asthma attributable hospital admissions and found a significantly positive relationship between SABA prescription and hospital admissions at area level. A study by Laurent et al (2009) suggested that SABA sales would increase with the elevated concentration of air pollution factors such as NO 2 , PM 10 and O 3 . Sofianopoulou et al (2013) used primary care data to investigate the association between respiratory prescription, social economic status and PM 10 and found a small but positive increase in prescriptions for an increase in air pollution.…”

“…In all these studies, SABA prescription data were limited to specific regions (Como, Italy for Vegni et al, 2005; Newcastle and North Tyneside for Sofianopoulou et al, 2013; Strasbourg region in France for Laurent et al, 2009), while to the best of our knowledge no previous study has focused on an entire country at a small area level.…”

Respiratory medication sales and urban air pollution in Brussels (2005 to 2011)

“…With observations of around one million residents over a period of seven years, this is the largest study that has investigated the relationship between daily respiratory medication sales and air pollution. To date, only few studies have used registry data of respiratory medication sales to investigate the health effects of air pollution (Pitard et al, 2004;Laurent et al, 2009;Zeghnoun et al, 1999;Vegni et al, 2005). Compared with hospital admissions and mortality, information on prescribed medication sales can be considered a good indicator of the burden of respiratory disease in the community because it captures the less severe and more frequent asthma and/or COPD exacerbations (Samet and Krewski, 2007).…”

“…Most previous studies on medication sales did not calculate risks for specific age groups (Zeghnoun et al, 1999;Vegni et al, 2005) or the number of groups included was limited to two (Laurent et al, 2009). Pitard et al (2004) performed separate analyses in 4 groups of age.…”

“…Panel studies indicate that increased levels of air pollutants are positively associated with asthma or COPD medication intake in asthmatic and COPD populations (Segala et al, 1998;Gent et al, 2009;van der Zee et al, 1999;Slaughter et al, 2003;Escamilla-Nuñez et al, 2008;Hiltermann et al, 1998;Silkoff et al, 2005). These observations have been confirmed by a few studies that used registries of medication sales or prescriptions in small/medium size French and Italian cities (Sofianopoulou et al, 2013;Pitard et al, 2004;Laurent et al, 2009;Zeghnoun et al, 1999;Vegni et al, 2005).…”