Air pollution has been found to be a cause of dementia in a study conducted by a professor of the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine at Urmea University, Sweden.
According to the researchers, an inclined risk of more than 40% can likely make people acquire vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease if they are breathing mostly from a polluted atmosphere than people from rural areas and places with fresh air.
The findings are "sensational" as distinguished by Bertil Forsberg, the researcher. He states that, "In total, about 16 percent of all the cases of dementia in the study might have been caused by exposure to pollution."
About 2,000 individuals, who were healthy when the study began, with ages 55 and above were observed for 15 years according to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Xinhua News reports that traffic patterns were synchronously done in the northern Swedish city of Umea.
Part of the method, long-term influence to such condition of air was marked from the mean nitrogen oxide levels per year at the subjects' residences at a certain criterion.
Age, lifestyle, educational attainment and body fat were core factors, which the researchers brought about, that could have increased the hazard. It has been shown also in preceding studies the linkage between the quality of air and maladies such as respiratory problems and cancer; it has been shown also to impact the brain.
The olfactory nerve, located in the nasal cavities, can be the door of corpuscles from the polluted air that can harm the brain indirectly. Hence, fresh air plays an important role in having a healthy brain.
The researcher, after the study, concludes that, "If the associations we observed are causal, then air pollution from traffic might be an important risk factor for vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease."
