Wu, Y-T., Beevers, S., Barratt, B. et al. (8 more authors) (2025) The longitudinal relationships between the built and natural environment, air pollution, noise and dementia: results from two UK-based cohort studies. Preventive Medicine, 198. 108348. ISSN 0091-7435
Abstract
Objective
Recent epidemiological studies have investigated a variety of environmental risk factors for dementia. However, most existing studies have focused on single environmental factors and reported mixed results. The aim of this study is to examine the interrelationships between multiple environment factors and their joint associations with cognitive health in later life.
Methods
This study was based on the Cognitive Function and Ageing Study II and Wales, two population-based cohort studies of 11,055 people aged ≥65 across five urban and rural areas in the UK. Using geospatial data, a wide range of environmental variables were generated for the participants and integrated into five domains through a latent approach, including the built environment, natural environment, noise, air pollution and deprivation. Multistate modelling was used to investigate their longitudinal associations with dementia and death adjusting for individual sociodemographic factors.
Results
The effect sizes of joint associations between the built environment (HR: 1.00; 95 %CI: 0.66, 1.52), natural environment (HR: 0.95; 95 %CI: 0.66, 1.36), air pollution (HR: 0.91; 95 %CI: 0.78, 1.07), deprivation (HR: 1.02; 95 %CI: 0.96, 1.09) and incident dementia were generally small. The strongest association was found in noise, where a high level of exposure was associated with an increased risk of incident dementia (HR: 1.22; 95 %CI: 0.97, 1.54). However, the confidence intervals were wide.
Conclusions
The joint associations between multiple environmental factors and incident dementia were found to be modest. Given mixed results in this field, future research should address methodological challenges and enhance evidence for population-level interventions on dementia risk factors.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Dementia, Older people, Environmental determinants, Risk factor, Cohort study |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number MRC (Medical Research Council) MR/T038500/1 NU-000785 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Jul 2025 12:38 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2025 12:38 |
Published Version: | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.ypmed.2025.108348 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:229028 |
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