Association Between Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Parkinson's Disease: Administrative Cohort of Older Adults in South Korea.

Authors

Jongmin Oh, Jisun Myung, Dong-Wook Lee, Changwoo Han, Yun-Chul Hong, Soontae Kim, Yoon-Hee Kang, Hyun-Joo Bae, Youn-Hee Lim

Published in

Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society. Sep 23, 2026. Epub Sep 23, 2026.

Abstract

Evidence regarding the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and Parkinson's disease (PD) remains inconsistent, particularly among older adults in Asian populations.
We aimed to examine the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollutants and incident PD in a nationwide administrative cohort of older adults in South Korea.
We analyzed 5.3 million adults aged ≥65 years from the Korean National Health Insurance Database (2010-2019). Incident PD was ascertained using nationwide insurance claims data, requiring hospitalization or repeated outpatient diagnoses. District-level annual concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone (O₃) were estimated using the Community Multiscale Air Quality model. Time-varying Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) per interquartile range (IQR) increase in a 1-year moving-average exposure, adjusting for individual- and district-level covariates.
During follow-up, 143,557 PD cases were identified. In fully adjusted models, each IQR increase in PM_2.5 (4.3 μg/m³) and O₃ (7.3 ppb) was associated with a modestly increased PD incidence (PM_2.5: HR = 1.018, 95% CI: 1.008-1.028; O₃: HR = 1.019, 95% CI: 1.006-1.033). However, NO₂ showed an inverse association after full adjustment. Effect modification by demographic or clinical characteristics was not statistically significant.
Long-term exposure to PM_2.5 and O₃ was associated with a small but statistically significant increase in PD incidence among older adults in Korea. These findings are consistent with a possible association between air pollution and the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases, although effect sizes were modest and should be interpreted with caution. © 2026 The Author(s). Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

PMID:
42778501
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Sep 2026.

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