Research suggests car fumes may pose a higher risk for women

Researchers suggest that road pollution may affect women more than men.

Ten volunteers, five men and five women, were asked to inhale the vapors for four hours at a time.

The experiment was carried out on three separate occasions per month with different diesel concentrations.

In both sexes, the researchers found changes in blood components linked to inflammation, infection and cardiovascular disease, but women had higher levels of protein linked to hardened arteries.

This may increase the risk of heart attack or stroke, but much more research is needed to confirm this.

Researchers suggest that road pollution may affect women more than men. In both sexes, the researchers found changes in blood components linked to inflammation, infection and cardiovascular disease, but women had higher levels of protein linked to hardened arteries.

Study co-author Professor Neeloffer Mookherjee, from the University of Manitoba in Canada, said: “These are preliminary results. But they show that exposure to diesel exhaust has different effects on women’s bodies.’

The results were presented at the International Congress of the European Respiratory Society in Barcelona.

Previous evidence has shown that women have a higher immune response to respiratory irritants such as house dust.

There is separate evidence that women appear to be more prone to respiratory infections and asthma compared to men.

The new study recruited healthy non-smoking men and women.

For the first time, they spent four hours breathing clean, filtered air.

They then switched from diesel exhaust to diluted vapors to determine the difference in the blood of the study participants after breathing the polluted air.

The experiment on the effect of pollution was carried out in three sessions, one month apart each.

Men and women alternately inhaled diesel fumes at concentrations of 20, 50, and 150 micrograms per liter of air for four hours.

These are all higher concentrations than those seen on busy London streets, but show the effect of pollution on the body.

Volunteers donated blood samples each time 24 hours after inhaling the fumes from the diesel, after which the researchers analyzed the liquid portion of the blood to look for changes in various protein levels.

By comparing the plasma samples, the researchers found 90 protein levels that differed significantly between male and female volunteers.

Some of these proteins were known to play a role in inflammation, damage repair, blood clotting, cardiovascular disease, and the immune system.

Some of these differences became more pronounced when the volunteers were exposed to higher levels of diesel exhaust.

Professor Zorana Andersen, from the University of Copenhagen, who chaired the Environment and Health Committee of the European Respiratory Society and was not involved in the study, said: It can be different between men and women.’

Dr. Samuel Cai, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the University of Leicester, said the results should be interpreted with caution, as they come from only 10 people who were exposed to real short-term pollution.

While other stories have shown a stronger link between air pollution and respiratory diseases in women than in men, she said: “The gender and gender differences in air pollution and health research are very complex because they involve many different aspects of behavior, work, and the two genders. physiological and psychological differences between

“Whether the effects are stronger in a given gender really depends on the types of air pollutants, the health outcomes studied, and the population studied, so I’m not going to speculate too much at this stage.”