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JAMA Network Open

Neighborhood disadvantage linked to faster lung decline

Higher neighborhood vulnerability was linked to an extra 3.11 milliliters per year of decline in air forcefully exhaled in one second.

Paper by Qizhen Wu, Yanhong Huang, Maria A. Picchi, +8 more authorsShuguang Leng · University of New Mexico
Figure 1 from JAMA Network Open
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Figure 1. Wu et al.

Our read

Populations
Studied:
Cohort study of 2,362 current and former smokers, 2001 through 2017
What changed:
Lung function declined an extra 3.11 milliliters per year with higher neighborhood vulnerability
The catch:
Differences in lifetime smoking exposure could partly explain the neighborhood associations

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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The 2,362 current and former smokers in this prospective cohort study were aged 40 to 75 at enrollment; 1,738 were women. All had smoked the equivalent of at least a pack a day for 10 years. Researchers assigned neighborhood disadvantage scores using home addresses and repeated breathing tests approximately every 18 months from 2001 through 2017. They tracked deaths through October 2020.

Higher neighborhood vulnerability was linked to faster lung function decline and worse breathing-related quality of life at enrollment. It was also linked to a higher relative risk of death from any cause, with a hazard ratio of 1.28. Analyses suggested that current smoking and dietary patterns may partly account for links between neighborhood disadvantage, lung function and quality of life.

Why it matters

Lung aging raises questions about how social conditions relate to changes in breathing over time. The authors’ analysis points to smoking and diet as possible partial contributors to these links.

Caveats

Differences in lifetime smoking exposure or other personal circumstances may also have contributed to the neighborhood links. The findings concern people with substantial smoking histories, not people who never smoked.

Where the evidence stands

Smoking

Humans: replicated by independent labs. Cells and mice: a single group. Worms or flies: nothing yet.

C, W, M, H: cells, worms or flies, mice, humans. Dark: independent labs found the same change there. Light: one lab or one study. Outline: nothing yet.

Labs are independent when their papers share no last author and no institution.

Against: findings that point the other way from most findings on the same outcome.

Company ties: findings with an author at a company, or from a paper whose competing-interests statement declares ties to one.

  • 833 independent labs in 93 countries
  • 124 findings against
  • Funders: National Institutes of Health and others
  • 138 of 2,052 findings with company ties

Dietary patterns

Humans: replicated by independent labs. Cells, worms or flies and mice: nothing yet.

C, W, M, H: cells, worms or flies, mice, humans. Dark: independent labs found the same change there. Light: one lab or one study. Outline: nothing yet.

Labs are independent when their papers share no last author and no institution.

Against: findings that point the other way from most findings on the same outcome.

Company ties: findings with an author at a company, or from a paper whose competing-interests statement declares ties to one.

  • 33 independent labs in 14 countries
  • 6 findings against
  • Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China and others
  • 1 of 41 findings with company ties

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