Residential greenness and kidney function: A cohort study of Thai employees

Greenness and kidney? A review of epidemiological studies on the association between green space and kidney disease

“…The cohort study of Park et al [ 25 ] was based on a large-scale prospective cohort, but covered patients enrolled at metropolitan hospitals, thus there were limitations in addressing nonmetropolitan areas, particularly rural areas which are generally more vulnerable to medical services [ 36 ]. Paoin et al [ 28 ] also conducted a prospective cohort study; however, their study included only employees in a certain company with limited age distribution (25 to 55 years), thus the generalizability of the study result may be less than in other population-based or multilocation cohort studies. The study by Lee et al [ 19 ], which is the latest in this review, performed a population-based cohort with the largest sample size (1.4 million beneficiaries) to achieve more generalizable results on greenness and kidney disease.…”

“…However, measuring NDVI can be sensitive to distortions in the reflectance caused by particles in the air, ground coverage below the vegetation, and areas with a large amount of chlorophyll [ 21 ], thus it might be not optimized in certain circumstances. Paoin et al [ 28 ] showed that the association with eGFR differed from the results of NDVI when EVI (that corrects the limitations of NDVI) was used as exposure. Furthermore, we should note that different buffer sizes to measure NDVI can increase the uncertainty of association assessment.…”

“…Fourth, potentially different exposure levels and health effects of green space depending on socioeconomic characteristics should be addressed importantly in future studies. Many studies in this review were performed in urban areas [ 24 , 25 , 27 , 28 ], thus there is a knowledge gap in explaining whether the beneficial effects of green space exist in rural areas. In addition, urbanicity is closely related to socioeconomic and environmental status as well as demographic compositions [ 40 ].…”

“…In 2023, two cohort studies on greenness and kidney disease were published. A cohort study for electricity generating authority of Thailand employees with 2,022 participants aged 25 to 55 years in the Bangkok Metropolitan region showed that the interquartile increase in all-season NDVI was related to a higher eGFR, with 1.03% increase in eGFR (95% CI, 0.33–1.71) [ 28 ]. However, they did not find an association between eGFR and the EVI, which is an optimized satellite-driven vegetation index that corrects distortions in the reflectance [ 21 ].…”

Association between Greenness and Cardio-Ankle Vascular Index: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

“…Lower values represent areas with a low concentration of vegetation, whereas higher numbers represent areas with a high concentration of greenery. The NDVI and EVI of the BMR and areas of Thailand have been documented elsewhere [6,7]. Long-term exposure to greenness of each subject's sub-district was defined as 1-year average concentrations prior to the subject's follow-up date in 2007, 2012, and 2017 [7].…”