Exposure to ambient air pollution mixture and senescence-associated secretory phenotype proteins among middle-aged and older women

Our study aimed to investigate the impact of environmental exposures, such as ambient air pollutants, on systemic inflammation and cellular senescence in middle-aged and older women. We utilized epidemiological data linked with exposure data of six air pollutants (particulate matters [PM₁₀, PM_2.5], sulphur dioxide [SO₂], nitrogen dioxide [NO₂], carbon monoxide [CO], and ozone [O₃]) and blood samples of 380 peri- and postmenopausal women participants of the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study. We measured blood high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and age-related 27 circulatory senescence-associated secretory phenotypes (SASP) produced by senescent cells. We employed single exposure models to explore the general pattern of association between air pollution exposure and proteomic markers. Using quantile g-computation models, we assessed the association of six air pollutant mixtures with hsCRP and SASP proteins. In single-exposure, single-period models, nine out of the 27 SASP proteins including IFN-γ (β = 0.04, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.07 per interquartile range-increase), IL-8 (0.15, 95% CI: 0.09, 0.20), and MIP1α (0.11, 95% CI: 0.04, 0.18) were positively associated with the average level of O₃ over one week. Among the age-related SASP proteins, IFN-γ (0.11, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.20) and IL-8 (0.22, 95% CI: 0.05, 0.39) were positively associated with exposure to air pollutant mixture over one week. The MIP1β was higher with an increasing one-month average concentration of the air pollutant mixture (0.11, 95% CI: 0.00, 0.21). The IL-8 showed consistently positive association with the ambient air pollutant mixture for the exposure periods ranging from one week to one year. O₃ predominantly showed positive weights in the associations between air pollutant mixtures and IL-8. These findings underscore the potential of proteomic indicators as markers for biological aging attributed to short-term air pollution exposure.