Association of short‐term exposure to ambient air pollution with mortality from ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke

BACKGROUND: Short-term exposure to ambient air pollution has been linked to increased risk of stroke mortality, but its adverse effects on mortality from specific types of stroke including ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke remain poorly understood. METHODS: exposure concentrations were extracted from the ChinaHighAirPollutants dataset for each subject. Conditional logistic regression models were performed to conduct exposure-response analyses. RESULTS: exposure was 6.90%, 6.48%, 8.21%, 8.61%, 9.67%, and 4.76%, respectively, which was also significantly higher than that of hemorrhagic stroke mortality (excess fraction: 3.49%, 3.48%, 4.69%, 3.48%, 5.86%, and 0.88%). These differences in adverse effects generally remained across sex, age, and season. CONCLUSIONS: Short-term exposure to ambient air pollution was significantly associated with increased risk of both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke mortality and posed considerable excess mortality. Our results suggest that air pollution exposure may lead to substantially greater adverse effects on mortality from ischemic stroke than that from hemorrhagic stroke.