Air Pollution May Shrink the Brain Agata Blaszczak-Boxe, 2015 Breathing polluted

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Air Pollution May Shrink the Brain Agata Blaszczak-Boxe, 2015 Breathing polluted air every day may change a person's brain in ways that end up leading to cogniti impairment, according to a new study In the study, researchers examined 943 healthy adults who the east coast of the United States. The investigators used magnetic resonance i look at the participants' brain structures, and compared the images with the air pollution lev the places where the participants lived. were at least 60 years old and lived on maging (MRI) to els in s found that an increase of 2 micrograms per cubic meter in fine-particle pollution, which is a range that can be observed across an average city, was linked to a 0.32 percent reduction in brain volume. (Fine-particle pollution is a common type of pollution that comes from car exhaust, among other sources.) The researcher study author Elissa H. Wilker, a researcher in the cardiovascular epidemiology research uni Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. That amount of change in brain volume "is equivalent to about one year of brain aging," said In general, a smaller brain volume is caused by the loss of neurons that co researchers said. mes with aging, the That same increase of 2 micrograms per cubic meter of fine-particle pollution was also linked with a 46 perce strokes," which can be seen on brain scans but don't usually cause symptoms. Such strokes have been associated with poorer cognitive function and dementia, the researchers said. nt increase in the participants' risk of having what researchers call "silent The researchers found that the people in the study who lived in areas with higher levels of pollution had smaller brain volumes and were also at higher risk of silent strokes compared with the people who lived in areas where the air was less polluted. This is the first study to examine a link between air pollution, brain volume and the risk of silent strokes in a population of older adults, the researchers said. Previous studies have examined the relationship between air pollution and the brain in children, but not in older adults, they said. It is not clear exactly how air pollution may change people's brains, the researchers said. They suspect that air pollution may cause increased inflammation, but the researchers are still trying to understand the link, Wilker said. Previous research has linked markers of inflammation to smaller brain volume, according to the study. The new results may help the researchers understand "what could be going on between air pollution and serious outcomes like stroke and cognitive impairment," Wilker said.

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Answer:

This article explains the outcome of the research study of impact of the pollution on the human brain and the silent stroke. The research was carried out on selected sample of adult people in US. Initially the MRI was taken for these people and later after living in the polluted region the MRI was again carried for all the people. Then the researcher carried out the analysis of the before and after MRI of individual people and found the interesting outcome that the size of the brain is reduced due to the pollution impact on the human brain. They were able to measure the impact on the human brain size reduction and it was declared that the reduction is human brains is like the aging of one year. Thus this gives a very good impression that if a person lives in polluted region than his brain will be aged more by a year as compared to the person lives in the non-polluted region. This suggests that if the aging of brain is high than there is a likely chance that human being will have increased chances of silent stroke. The research study was an attempt for correlation between pollution, brain impact and silent stroke on individuals.

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