Geospatial analysis of environmental atmospheric risk factors in neurodegenerative diseases: a systematic review update

Data de publicação: 24/10/2024

Unidades de investigação

Laboratório Associado RISE- Rede de Investigação em Saúde

Investigador

Fernando Carlos De Landér Schmitt
Medicina da Comunidade, Informação e Decisão em Saúde
RISE-Health

Investigador

Fernando Carlos De Landér Schmitt

Abstract

Following up the previously published systematic review on the same topic and realizing that new studies and evidence had emerged on the matter, we conducted an update on the same research terms. With the objective of updating the information relating environmental risk factors on neurodegenerative diseases and the geographic approaches used to address them, we searched PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus for all scientific studies considering the following three domains: neurodegenerative disease, environmental atmospheric factor and geographical analysis, using the same keywords as in the previously published systematic review. From February 2020 to February 2023, 35 papers were included versus 34 in the previous period, with dementia (including Alzheimer's disease) being the most focused disease (60.0%) in this update, opposed to multiple sclerosis on the last review (55.9%). Also, environmental pollutants such as PM2.5 and NO2 have gained prominence, being represented in 65.7% and 42.9% of the new studies, opposed to 9.8% and 12.2% in the previous review, compared to environmental factors such as sun exposure (5.7% in the update vs 15.9% in the original). The mostly used geographic approach remained the patient's residence (82.9% in the update vs 21.2% in the original and 62.3% in total), and remote sensing was used in 45.7% of the new studies versus 19.7% in the original review, with 42.0% of studies using it globally, being the second most common approach, usually to compute the environmental variable. This review has been registered in PROSPERO with the number CRD42020196188.