Association of Air Quality and Myocardial Infarction

Besides classical cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking, obesity, elevated cholesterol levels and diabetes there are also acute factors potentially triggering acute coronary events. The impact of various substances and air pollution are described. Particulate matter, especially with small particle size (\<2.5µm) has been shown to have a positive correlation with myocardial infarctions. However, other studies failed to show this correlation. With respect to nitric oxydes the majority of published studies detected a significant correlation with myocardial infarction, too, although a highly ranked publication failed to show the same result. In addition data on the impact of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide concentration on cardiac events is very heterogeneous. Published data indicates additive effects of age and other epidemiological variables suggesting the need of a multivariate analysis. The rationale of the study is to test if the above mentioned air pollution factors have a significant and independent impact on the incidence of myocardial infarctions