ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2012
Systematic evaluation of environmental factors: persistent pollutants and nutrients correlated with serum lipid levels.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 146 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Lipid Signatures in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Non-genetic risk and protective factors and biomarkers for neurological disorders: a meta-umbrella systematic review of umbrella reviews.BMC medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Design and methodology challenges of environment-wide association studies: A systematic review.Environmental research · 2020Pooled it
- Association between Exposure toEnvironmental health perspectives · 2017Pooled it
- Environment-Wide Association Study of Blood Pressure in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999-2012).Scientific reports · 2016Pooled it
- Field-wide meta-analyses of observational associations can map selective availability of risk factors and the impact of model specifications.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2016Pooled it
- Nutrient-wide association study of 57 foods/nutrients and epithelial ovarian cancer in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study and the Netherlands Cohort Study.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2016Pooled it
- Mediterranean Diet Adherence and Genetic Background Roles within a Web-Based Nutritional Intervention: The Food4Me Study.Nutrients · 2017Trial
- A dietary-wide association study (DWAS) of environmental metal exposure in US children and adults.PloS one · 2014Trial
- A nutrient-wide association study on blood pressure.Circulation · 2012Trial
- Associations of vegetarianism with circulating lipids across varying genetic capacity: a cross-sectional Polygenic Score-by-Vegetarianism interaction study in UK Biobank.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- An atlas of exposome-phenome associations in health and disease risk.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Associations of exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with hearing in U.S. Adults.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- From wetlands to landfills: white stork (Arhiv za higijenu rada i toksikologiju · 2025Review
- Mapping the exposome of mental health: exposome-wide association study of mental health outcomes among UK Biobank participants.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- The burgeoning cardiovascular disease epidemic in Indians - perspectives on contextual factors and potential solutions.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2023Review
- Causes of Outcome Learning: a causal inference-inspired machine learning approach to disentangling common combinations of potential causes of a health outcome.International journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- The effects of chemical mixtures on lipid profiles in the Korean adult population: threshold and molecular mechanisms for dyslipidemia involved.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Article
- Causal inference in high dimensions: A marriage between Bayesian modeling and good frequentist properties.Biometrics · 2022Article
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundBoth genetic and environmental factors contribute to triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), and high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels. Although genome-wide association studies are currently testing the genetic factors systematically, testing and reporting one or a few factors at a time can lead to fragmented literature for environmental chemical factors. We screened for correlation between environmental factors and lipid levels, utilizing four independent surveys with information on 188 environmental factors from the Centers of Disease Control, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, collected between 1999 and 2006.
methodsWe used linear regression to correlate each environmental chemical factor to triglycerides, LDL-C and HDL-C adjusting for age, age(2), sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status and body mass index. Final estimates were adjusted for waist circumference, diabetes status, blood pressure and survey. Multiple comparisons were controlled for by estimating the false discovery rate and significant findings were tentatively validated in an independent survey.
resultsWe identified and validated 29, 9 and 17 environmental factors correlated with triglycerides, LDL-C and HDL-C levels, respectively. Findings include hydrocarbons and nicotine associated with lower HDL-C and vitamin E (γ-tocopherol) associated with unfavourable lipid levels. Higher triglycerides and lower HDL-C were correlated with higher levels of fat-soluble contaminants (e.g. polychlorinated biphenyls and dibenzofurans). Nutrients and vitamin markers (e.g. vitamins B, D and carotenes), were associated with favourable triglyceride and HDL-C levels.
conclusionsOur systematic association study has enabled us to postulate about broad environmental correlation to lipid levels. Although subject to confounding and reverse causality bias, these findings merit evaluation in additional cohorts.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.