A study suggests that prolonged exposure to air pollution may increase the risk of depression later in life
Riyadh – Asdaf News:
A significant new study reveals that exposure to air pollution may increase the likelihood of experiencing depression later in life.
More and more research is showing that persons who live in polluted places have a higher risk of depression than those who do not. One of the first studies to look at links between long-term exposure and the risk of depression identified beyond age 64 is this one, which was published on Friday in JAMA Network Open.
Depression is a dangerous medical disorder in and of itself. Studies reveal that when it manifests in an older adult, it can also contribute to issues with thinking effectively, as well as health issues and even mortality.
Previous studies have shown that older persons are less likely than younger populations to receive a new diagnosis of depression.
“That’s one of the biggest reason we wanted to conduct this analysis,”Surprisingly, we saw a large number of late-onset depression diagnoses in this study”. said Dr. Xinye Qiu, co-author of the new study and postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “ ”
During the study period from 2005 to 2016, the researchers examined data on more than 8.9 million individuals who received their health insurance through Medicare and discovered that more than 1.52 million had been diagnosed with depression. However, the number is likely an underestimate because studies suggest that depression in later life is frequently misdiagnosed.
