Renjie Chen

• Fudan University

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) have been associated with certain cancers in the occupational population. This study aimed to investigate the associations between low-level ambient BTEX exposure and cancer risks in the general population. We leveraged data from the UK Biobank and included individuals free of cancer at 2006–2010 ba...

Prospective evidence on the relationship of greenness with cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence is limited in low- and middle-income countries. In 512,691 participants of the China Kadoorie Biobank cohort across 10 regions in China, we calculated the levels of greenness exposure based on satellite-retrieved Normalized Difference Vegetation Index...

The impact of rising ambient temperatures on sleep and its phases under climate change is becoming increasingly concerning but remains underexplored. Sleep, consisting of non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement phases, is crucial for health, and insufficient sleep in either phase could have significant implications. Based on sleep monitoring...

Background: Sedentary behavior (SB) is associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain, but limited evidence exists about its impact on chronic spinal pain (CSP). Aim: This study aims to explore the relationship between SB, physical activity, and the risk of CSP. Design: Cross-sectional and cohort study design. Setting: United Kingdom (UK). Po...

Evidence regarding the impact of ozone on age-related macular degeneration (AMD) remains limited. We conducted a nationwide cohort analysis of 27,923 participants in China, along with a random control animal toxicological study, to elucidate the temporal relationship between ozone exposure and AMD as well as the underlying biological explanation. I...

Heatwaves are commonly simplified as binary variables in epidemiological studies, limiting the understanding of heatwave-mortality associations. Here we conduct a multi-country study across 28 East Asian cities that employed the Cumulative Excess Heatwave Index (CEHWI), which represents excess heat accumulation during heatwaves, to explore the pote...

Fine particulate matter has been linked with acute coronary syndrome. Nevertheless, the key constituents remain unclear. Here, we conduct a nationwide case-crossover study in China during 2015–2021 to quantify the associations between fine particulate matter constituents (organic matter, black carbon, nitrate, sulfate, and ammonium) and acute coron...

Background Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between ambient ozone (O 3 ) and mortality from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is the only outcome considered in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 for O 3 . This study aims to evaluate the temporal trend and spatial distribution of the COPD burden...

Importance Particulate matter exposure has been linked to impaired respiratory health in children, but the respiratory benefits of air purification have not been fully elucidated. Objectives To assess the respiratory health outcomes among children exposed to multisetting air purification vs sham purification. Design, Setting, and Participants Thi...

Floods are becoming more frequent and severe in the context of climate change, with major impacts on human health. However, their effect on infant mortality remains unknown, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. We conducted a sibling-matched case-control study using individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys in Africa du...

Background Ambient pollution and non-optimal temperature are major risk factors for respiratory health. However, the relationships between short-term exposure to these factors and bronchiectasis mortality remain unknown. Methods A nationwide, time-stratified case-crossover study across Mainland China was conducted from 2013 to 2019. Records of bro...

The response to climate change and air pollution control demonstrates strong synergy across scientific mechanisms, targets, strategies, and governance systems. This report, based on a monitoring indicator system for coordinated governance of air pollution and climate change, employs an interdisciplinary approach combining natural and social science...

Background and Aims Although non-optimum ambient temperature is a major non-traditional risk factor for acute myocardial infarction, there is no prior knowledge on whether non-optimum ambient temperature could differentially affect myocardial infarction with obstructive coronary artery disease (MI-CAD) and myocardial infarction with non-obstructive...

Background To assess the long-term impact of residential air pollution and green space exposure on cause-specific mortality in individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods This study includes 174,063 participants newly diagnosed with T2DM from a prospective cohort in Shanghai, China, enrolled between 2011 and 2013. Residential annual...

Background The relationship between sedentary time, physical activity, and chronic back pain remains unclear. The study aims to investigate whether sedentary time and physical activity predict chronic back pain and morphological brain changes. Methods This cohort study recruited adults aged 37–73 years enrolled between 2006 and 2010, with follow-u...

Global warming shifts daytime-only heatwaves to nighttime-only and day–night compound heatwaves. However, evidence on the cause-specific burdens of these heatwaves in a changing climate and ageing population is limited. Here, by analysing 1,088,742 non-accidental deaths from 272 Chinese cities, we found that compound heatwaves posed significantly h...

Background Short-term exposure to particulate matter air pollution has been associated with the exacerbations of COPD, but its association with COPD mortality was not fully elucidated. We aimed to assess the association between short-term particulate matter exposure and the risk of COPD mortality in China using individual-level data. Methods We de...

Evidence on the effects of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure on skin color and its potential preventive intervention is scare. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial among 65 healthy college students suggested that short-term PM2.5 exposure may lead to darkening and yellowing of skin tone. The yellowness may be modulate...

Background: The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) inequity and incident age-related macular degeneration (AMD) remains unclear. We aim to investigate whether low SES increases the risk of AMD and to explore the effect of a healthy lifestyle on this association. Methods: This prospective cohort study included 316,663 UK Biobank individ...

Importance Although existing research has found daily heat to be associated with dementia-related outcomes, there is still a gap in understanding the differing associations of nighttime and daytime heat with dementia-related deaths. Objectives To quantitatively assess the risk and burden of dementia-related deaths associated with short-term nightt...

To investigate the association of long-term exposure to air pollution with incident arrhythmia from various causes, this prospective cohort study included 442,386 participants from the UK Biobank cohort. Residential annual average exposures at baseline were evaluated, including fine particles (PM2.5), coarse particles (PM2.5–10), nitrogen dioxide (...

OBJECTIVE Evidence of the associations between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and diabetes risk from women of reproductive age, in whom diabetes may have adverse long-term health effects for both themselves and future generations, remains scarce. We therefore examined the associations of long-term PM2.5 exposure with fasting blood glucose (FBG) le...

Background: Although ambient temperature has been linked with injury incidence, there have been few nationwide studies to quantify the temperature-related risk and burden of cause-specific injury hospitalizations. Additionally, the impact of human-induced climate change to injury burden remains unknown. Objectives: Our objectives are to examine...

The association between the exposure of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and serum uric acid (UA) levels remained uncertain. In this study, to investigate the combined effects of OCP mixtures on hyperuricemia, we analyzed serum OCPs and UA levels in adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2005–2016). Four statistical model...

Extreme rainfall, intensified by climate change, elevates the risk of infectious diseases. The connection between extreme rainfall and common respiratory diseases remains unclear. Here we used a probabilistic approach to detect extreme rainfall events with different return periods for 30 cities across four East Asian countries and regions, includin...

Purpose of Review Air pollution has been a serious environmental and public health issue worldwide, particularly in Asian countries. There have been significant increases in epidemiological studies on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone pollution in East Asia, and an in-depth review of epidemiological evidence is urgent. Thus, we carried out...

Ground-level ozone (O3) is one of the major air pollutants. A large body of literature has linked O3 air pollution to various adverse human health effects. The objective of this study is to attain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the progress and frontiers of research on O3 and human health. We used bibliometric methods to summarize pu...

Importance Previous studies have demonstrated the associations of daily high temperature with hospitalizations and mortality from ischemic stroke, but the hourly association of ambient heat and acute ischemic stroke (AIS) onset has been rarely examined. Objectives To evaluate the association between hourly high ambient temperature and the onset of...

Floods have affected billions worldwide. Yet, the indirect health impacts of floods on vulnerable groups, particularly women in the developing world, remain underexplored. Here, we evaluated the risk of pregnancy loss for women exposed to floods. We analyzed 90,465 individual pregnancy loss records from 33 developing countries, cross-referencing ea...

Background: Existing studies have already shown a connection between nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure and cerebrovascular mortality. However, the differential effects of NO2 on cerebrovascular disease and its subtypes remain unclear and require further exploration. Methods: Daily stroke mortality data between 2013 and 2021 in Shanghai, China were co...

Limited knowledge exists regarding the ramifications of climate warming on death burden from neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we conducted a nationwide, individual-level, case-crossover study between 2013 and 2019 to investigate the effects of non-optimal temperatures on various neurodegenerative diseases and to predict the potential death burden...

Previous epidemiological studies have linked short-term exposure to particulate matter with outpatient visits for respiratory diseases. However, evidence on ultrafine particle (UFP) is still scarce in China. To investigate the association between short-term UFP exposure and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases as well as the corresponding lag...

Background It remains unknown how ambient temperature impact pneumonia of various infectious causes. Methods Based on the national death registry covering all counties in Chinese mainland, we conducted an individual-level case-crossover study in China from 2013 to 2019. Exposures were assigned at residential addresses for each decedent. Conditiona...

The impact of industrial chemical components of ambient fine particles (e.g., PM2.5) on cardiovascular health has been poorly explored. Our study reports for the first time the associations between human exposure to complex plastic additive (PA) components of PM2.5 and prolongation of heart rate-corrected QT (QTC) interval by employing a screening-...

Objectives Air pollution has been suggested as an important risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); however, evidence of interactive effects on COPD between different factors was sparse, especially for young adults. We aimed to assess the combined effects of ambient ozone (O 3 ) and household air pollution on COPD in young ind...

Objective To investigate potential interactive effects of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) and ozone (O 3 ) on daily mortality at global level. Design Two stage time series analysis. Setting 372 cities across 19 countries and regions. Population Daily counts of deaths from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease. Main outco...

Childhood anemia constitutes a global public health problem, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, it remains unknown whether global warming has an impact on childhood anemia. Here, we examined the association between annual temperatures and childhood anemia prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and then projected childhood an...

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can lead to sleep deprivation, accidents, and cardiovascular diseases. However, research on the short-term effects of air pollutants on OSA severity is limited and inconsistent. We conducted a novel case time series analysis using a nationwide dataset among Huawei smart device users to assess the association between ai...

China is now confronting the intertwined challenges of air pollution and climate change. Given the high synergies between air pollution abatement and climate change mitigation, the Chinese government is actively promoting synergetic control of these two issues. The Synergetic Roadmap project was launched in 2021 to track and analyze the progress of...

The spatial disparity of air pollutants is one of the key influential factors for environmental inequality. We quantitatively evaluated the evolution of PM2.5 spatial disparity in China during 2013–2020, and investigated the associations between PM2.5 spatial disparity and economic indicators. Differences in PM2.5 between more- and less-polluted ci...

Background: Few studies have explored the relationships between cold spells and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) using the information of symptom onset. Objectives: We assessed the impact of cold spells on AMI onset and the potential effect modifiers. Methods: We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study among 456,051 eligible patients...

The associations between air pollution and diabetes mortality of different subtypes and complications were largely unclear. We performed an individual-level, time-stratified case-crossover study among over 0.9 million diabetes deaths from all administrative regions of Chinese mainland during 2013-2019. Daily concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5)...

To examine the associations between macrosomia risk and exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and its chemical components during pregnancy, we collected birth records between 2010 and 2015 in mainland China from the National Free Preconception Health Examination Project and used satellite-based models to estimate concentrations of PM2.5 mass...

Few multicity studies have examined the acute effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on respiratory disease (RD), especially its specific causes. This study aimed to investigate the associations between short-term exposure to NO2 and hospitalization of full-spectrum RDs in China. Hospitalization of 10 major categories and 40 cause-specific RDs were obta...

Background: Few large-scale, nationwide studies have assessed cause-specific mortality risks and burdens associated with temperature variability (TV). Objective: To estimate associations between TV and cause-specific mortality and quantify the mortality burden in China. Methods: Data on daily total and cause-specific mortality in 272 Chinese c...

Importance: Intimate partner violence (IPV), including physical, sexual, and emotional violence, constitutes a critical public health problem, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. While climate change could escalate violent events, data quantifying its possible association with IPV are scant. Objective: To evaluate the association o...

Background and purpose Associations between fine and coarse particulate matters (i.e., PM 2.5 and PM 2.5–10 , respectively) and the onset of angina have rarely been investigated. We aimed to systematically explore the impacts of PM 2.5 as well as PM 2.5–10 on the onset of stable and unstable angina at the hourly timescale. Methods We performed a t...

Ambient particles severely threaten human health worldwide. Compared to larger particles, ultrafine particles (UFPs) are highly concentrated in ambient environments, have a larger specific surface area, and are retained for a longer time in the lung. Recent studies have found that they can be transported into various extra-pulmonary organs by cross...

Background: Future climate change is likely to alter cold spell-related disease burden. Few projection studies have considered the potential impact of the aging population with changing population size on cold spell-related disease burdens. Methods: We derived the association between cold spells and daily mortality for 272 main cities in mainlan...

Previous research has indicated that the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway (CAP) can regulate the duration and intensity of inflammatory responses. A wide range of research has demonstrated that PM2.5 exposure may induce various negative health effects via pulmonary and systemic inflammations. To study the potential role of the CAP in mediating...

Objective: The co-occurrence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and mood disorders (depression or anxiety) is an exceedingly common comorbidity with poor prognosis. We aimed to explore the effects of physical activity (PA), fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution or their interactions on the initiation, progression and subsequent mortality of this com...

Background: The associations between fine and coarse particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM2.5-10) air pollution and hospital admissions for full-spectrum respiratory diseases were rarely investigated, especially for age-specific associations. We aim to estimate the age-specific associations of short-term exposures to PM2.5 and PM2.5-10 with hospital ad...

Background: Exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) has been associated with increased risks of respiratory diseases, but the biological mechanisms are not yet fully elucidated. Objectives: Our aim was to evaluate the respiratory responses and explore potential biological mechanisms of TRAP exposure in a randomized crossover trial. Met...