Reduced Ambient PM2.5 Was Associated with a Decreased Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

Many countries have dedicated to the mitigation of air pollution in the past several decades. However, evidence of beneficial effects of air quality improvement on chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains limited. We thus investigated the effects of dynamic changes (including deterioration and improvement) in air quality on the incidence of CKD in a longitudinal study in Taiwan. During 2001–2016, this study recruited a total of 163,197 Taiwanese residents who received at least two standard physical examinations. The level of fine particle matter (PM2.5) was estimated using a high-resolution (1 km2) satellite-based spatio-temporal model. We defined changes of PM2.5 concentrations (ΔPM2.5) as the difference between the two-year average measurements during follow-up and during the immediately preceding visit. The time-dependent Cox regression model was adopted to evaluate the relationships between ΔPM2.5 and the incidence of CKD after adjusting for a series of covariates. The concentrations of PM2.5 in Taiwan peaked around 2004 and began to decrease since 2005. We observed an approximate linear concentration–response relationship of ΔPM2.5 with CKD incidence. Every 5 μg/m3 decrease in the ambient concentration of PM2.5 was associated with a 25% reduced risk of CKD development [hazard ratio (HR): 0.75; 95% CI: 0.73, 0.78]. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the improvement of PM2.5 air quality might be associated with a lower risk of CKD development. Our findings indicate that reducing air pollution may effectively prevent the development of CKD.