Short-term exposure to ambient nitrogen dioxide and increased hospitalization burden for depression in China: a multicity analysis

ABSTRACT

Evidence for the increased hospitalization burden, including admissions, expenditures and length of hospital stay (LOS) for depression attributable to ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) is lacking. We investigated the associations between short-term exposure to ambient NO₂ and attributable admissions, hospitalization expenditures and LOS for depression in 57 Chinese cities during 2013–2017 using a well-established two-stage time-series study approach. Short-term exposure to ambient NO₂ was associated with significantly increased admissions, hospitalization expenditures and LOS for depression, and the attributable fractions were 6.87% (95% CI: 2.90%, 10.65%), 7.12% (3.01%, 11.04%) and 6.12% (2.59%, 9.50%) at lag02, respectively. The projected total attributable admissions, hospitalization expenditures and LOS for depression related to ambient NO₂ at the national level were 23,335 (9,863, 36,181) admissions, 318.70 (134.43, 492.21) million CNY and 539.55 (227.99, 836.99) thousand days during the study period, respectively. Short-term exposure to ambient NO₂ is associated with increased hospitalization burden for depression.

KEYWORDS:

• Air pollution
• depression
• expenditures
• hospitalization
• nitrogen dioxide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2022.2126828.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [82073509] and National Key Research and Development Program of China [2017YFC0211600, 2017YFC0211601].