SynthesisInternational journal of environmental research and public health2022
Air Pollution and Cognitive Impairment across the Life Course in Humans: A Systematic Review with Specific Focus on Income Level of Study Area.
Synthesis in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The association between air pollution and cognitive impairment: a systematic review and meta- analysis of global studies.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Effect of air pollutants particulate matter (PMScientific reports · 2024Pooled it
- Lifetime air pollution exposure, cognitive deficits, and brain imaging outcomes: A systematic review.Neurotoxicology · 2023Pooled it
- Air pollution and cognitive outcomes in older adults: a systematic review.Reviews on environmental health · 2026Review
- Impacts of contemporaneous air pollution exposure on cognitive performance in Kenya.Journal of health economics · 2026Article
- Air pollution is linked to divergent cortical thickness patterns in brain regions vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.Neurotoxicology · 2026Article
- Effect of Environment on the Cognition of Older Adults: A Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- A critical review of potential modifiers of air pollutant associations with dementia and related outcomes.Neurotoxicology · 2026Review
- Airborne particulate matter and the lung-brain axis: unraveling the neuroinflammatory cascade from alveolar irritation to microglial activation.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2026Review
- Trends in cognitive impairment among older adults in China from 2002 to 2022: Evaluating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease · 2026Article
- Physical Activity, Cognitive Function, and Learning Processes: The Role of Environmental Context.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The relationship between early life course air pollution exposure and general health in adolescence in the United Kingdom.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Cognitive Performance and Long-term Exposure to Outdoor Air Pollution: Findings From the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Substudy of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA-HCAP).The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Mental Health and Lifestyle Factors Among Higher Education Students: A Cross-Sectional Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Life-course exposure to air pollution and the risk of dementia in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2025Article
- Stakeholder perspectives on the effects of environmental and socio-economic factors on children's health and learning: a qualitative study in Greater Manchester, England.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Outdoor air pollution and psychiatric symptoms in adolescents: a study of peripheral inflammatory marker associations.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Development and interpretation of a machine learning predictive model for early cognitive impairment in hypertension associated with environmental factors.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Article
- Air pollution, health and regulations in Brazil: are we progressing?Cadernos de saude publica · 2025Article
- A systematic review of associations between the environment, DNA methylation, and cognition.Environmental epigenetics · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive function is a crucial determinant of human capital. The Lancet Commission (2020) has recognized air pollution as a risk factor for dementia. However, the scientific evidence on the impact of air pollution on cognitive outcomes across the life course and across different income settings, with varying levels of air pollution, needs further exploration. A systematic review was conducted, using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Guidelines to assess the association between air pollution and cognitive outcomes across the life course with a plan to analyze findings as per the income status of the study population. The PubMed search included keywords related to cognition and to pollution (in their titles) to identify studies on human participants published in English until 10 July 2020. The search yielded 84 relevant studies that described associations between exposure to air pollutants and an increased risk of lower cognitive function among children and adolescents, cognitive impairment and decline among adults, and dementia among older adults with supportive evidence of neuroimaging and inflammatory biomarkers. No study from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)was identified despite high levels of air pollutants and high rates of dementia. To conclude, air pollution may impair cognitive function across the life-course, but a paucity of studies from reLMICs is a major lacuna in research.
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