Air pollution is as bad as following a high-fat diet: It ups your risk of diabetes too
The effects of air pollution are many and continuous exposure can lead to a range of health conditions like respiratory ailments, hypertension and many more. Today, in fact, this has become one of the major concerns in many countries across the world. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also warned that air pollution is bad as tobacco in terms of affecting your lungs. Polluted air adds toxins like nitrogen oxide, ozone, particulate matter and many other hazardous substances to our lungs and makes them more vulnerable to contracting infections. Some of these particles may enter the bloodstream and cause damage to your organs too. Scientists have for long been studying the effects of environmental toxins on health and ways to overcome them.
Now, a new study at the University Hospitals Harrington in the US has found that air pollution can play a major role in the development of cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. This study, published in the Journal of Clinical, discovered that air pollution was a risk factor that contributed majorly to the risk factors of many other fatal problems like heart attack and stroke.
Environmental pollution linked to heart disease, diabetes
For the purpose of the study researchers created an environment that mimicked a polluted day in New Delhi or Beijing. They concentrated fine particles of air pollution called PM2.5. Concentrated particles like this develop from human impact on the environment, such as automobile exhaust, power generation and other fossil fuels. These particles have been strongly connected to risk factors for disease. For example, the cardiovascular effects of air pollution can lead to heart attack and stroke. The research team was able to prove that exposure to air pollution can increase the likelihood of the same risk factors that lead to heart diseases, such as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes by conducting experiments on mice.
Air pollution, high-fat diet increases insulin resistance
Researchers observed 3 groups of mice – a control group receiving clean filtered air, a group exposed to polluted air for 24 weeks, and a group fed a high-fat diet. They saw that being exposed to air pollution was comparable to eating a high-fat diet. Both the air pollution and high-fat diet groups showed insulin resistance and abnormal metabolism – just like one would see in a pre-diabetic state. These changes were associated with changes in the epigenome, a layer of control that can masterfully turn on and turn off thousands of genes, representing a critical buffer in response to environmental factors.
Good news is that the risk can be reversed
This study is the first-of-its-kind to compare genome-wide epigenetic changes in response to air pollution, compare and contrast these changes with that of eating an unhealthy diet, and examine the impact of air pollution cessation on these changes. According to researchers, these effects were reversible, at least in the experiments. Once the air pollution was removed from the environment, the mice appeared healthier and the pre-diabetic state seemed to reverse.