ArticleFrontiers in public health2026
Paradoxical PM2.5-longevity estimates in global country panels are sensitive to differential trend control: a specification analysis, 2000-2023.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Country-year panels are widely used for environmental health research, but heterogeneous national trajectories can produce ecological coefficients that conflict with established health evidence. Methods: We assembled 4,406 country-year observations from 186 economies in the World Bank World Development Indicators for 2000-2023. Annual life expectancy was regressed on population-weighted ambient PM2.5 exposure using economy and year fixed effects, with adjustment for gross domestic product per capita, health expenditure, and urbanization. The original sensitivity analyses examined alternative weights, covariance estimators, exposure lags, sample restrictions, and temporal transformations; a future-exposure negative control tested residual temporal structure. Economy-specific trends and rolling five-year differences were added after the conventional estimate showed an unexpected positive sign. Results: The conventional adjusted model associated a 10 μg/m Conclusion: The positive conventional coefficient was not robust to trend-focused specifications, and the future-exposure pattern raised concern about unresolved temporal structure without constituting a stand-alone falsification test. The pattern is consistent with unresolved differential trajectories, but the analysis does not establish that trend heterogeneity is the sole source of bias. Aggregate PM2.5-longevity studies require explicit estimand definition, trend diagnostics, change-based estimators, covariance sensitivity checks, and temporal negative controls before interpreting coefficients as health effects.
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.