Global, regional and national estimates of the burden of childhood asthma attributable to NO2 exposure for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2023: a Global Burden of Disease study 2023

TL;DR

This study estimates how much childhood asthma is caused by nitrogen dioxide pollution worldwide from 1990 to 2023, showing it's a major health risk in many regions.

Contribution

The study provides the first global, regional, and national estimates of childhood asthma burden attributable to NO2 exposure using updated methods and data up to 2023.

Findings

NO2 exposure was estimated to contribute to 4.67% of global childhood asthma disability years in 2023.

NO2 ranked third as a risk factor for childhood asthma in high-income Europe and central Asia, and second in South Asia.

The burden of NO2-related asthma has decreased in some regions since 1990 but remains significant in urban and high-income areas.

Abstract

Asthma, a chronic lung condition characterised by inflammation and airway constriction, has been associated with nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure, an association that particularly impacts children. Our study rigorously assessed this relationship and estimated the global burden of childhood asthma attributable to NO2 exposure in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2023.

We systematically reviewed epidemiological studies evaluating NO2's long-term impact on childhood asthma. Using burden of proof meta-regression methods that account for bias by adjusting for study-design covariates and quantify remaining unexplained between-study heterogeneity to incorporate into uncertainty, we estimated the relative risk of childhood asthma occurring as a function of NO2 exposure. From this, we computed global and country-specific population attributable fractions (PAFs) – i.e., the proportional change in asthma risk that would occur if NO2 exposure were reduced to a theoretical minimum exposure level range of 4.6–6.2 ppb. We applied PAFs to data from the 2023 Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) to derive the asthma burden attributable to NO2 exposure in children and youths under 20 years old. Burden of proof methods allowed us to further compute risk–outcome metrics quantifying the magnitude of the NO2–asthma association and its strength of supporting evidence.

We identified a total of 27 cohort studies, spanning 12 countries, primarily in Europe and high-income North America, with some studies from Asia (China and Japan). A meta-regression log-linear risk curve of these studies produced a summary RR of 1.05 (95% UI 0.99–1.12) per 5 ppb NO2 and Egger's regression indicated significant publication bias. We estimated a global PAF of 4.67% (95% uncertainty interval [UI]: −3.75 to 20.6; all UIs reported in this study are inclusive of between-study heterogeneity except where noted), yielding 233,000 (−250,000–956,000) years lived with disability (YLDs) attributable to NO2 globally in 2023. GBD 2023 ranked NO2 seventh among environmental risk factors contributing to YLDs in children for all causes and third for childhood asthma YLDs. Attributable burden estimates and trends varied significantly by GBD super-region. While NO2-attributable childhood asthma burden has declined substantially since 1990 in the high-income and central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia super-regions, NO2 remains a prominent environmental risk factor in these two super-regions, ranked third in both super-regions for paediatric asthma YLDs in 2023, contributing 57,100 (−63 600 to 242,000) and 6570 (−7050 to 30,200) YLDs, respectively. In South Asia, NO2 ranks second as risk factor for pediatric asthma contributing to 20,100 (−17 600, 105,000) YLDs in 2023.

NO2 pollution remains a top environmental risk for paediatric health, necessitating policy interventions targeting NO2 pollution, especially in high-income locations and urban areas.

The research described in this article was conducted in part under contract with the 10.13039/100001160Health Effects Institute (HEI), an organization jointly funded by the 10.13039/100000139United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and certain motor vehicle and engine manufacturers, grant number 4977/20-11. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views of HEI or its sponsors, nor do they necessarily reflect the views and policies of the EPA or motor vehicle and engine manufacturers. Additional funding for this study was received by the Gates foundation, grant no. OPP1152504 for MB, KB, and SW. SA, DG, AM and GHK were supported by 10.13039/100000104NASA grant no. 80NSSC21K0511 and SA and GHK 10.13039/100000002NIH grant no. P20ES036775.

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