Increase in daily asthma medication sales in association with air pollution levels in Greater Stockholm.

Daily air pollution levels are known to influence the number of patients with acute asthma. We investigated the short-term effects of air pollution exposure on the daily number of asthma medication purchases in the Greater Stockholm area, Sweden.

Methods: We conducted a time-series study with data on asthma medication purchases and daily mean values of particulate matter ≤10 µm (PM₁₀), nitrogen oxides (NO_x), and ozone during 2018-2019. We used nonlinear distributed lag quasi-Poisson regression models to estimate the associations between air pollution levels and medication purchases, adjusting for meteorological variables, pollen levels, day of the week, and long-term trends. The models established linear relationships between air pollutants and the outcome, and potential delayed effects were smoothed with a spline across a lag period of 2 weeks. We applied separate models for each municipality (n = 21) in Greater Stockholm, and calculated pooled estimates to achieve combined results for the whole region.

Results: We observed associations between daily levels of air pollution and purchases of asthma medications, most clearly for PM₁₀. The pooled estimates of the relative risks for asthma medication purchases across all 21 municipalities associated with a 10 μg m^-3 increase in PM₁₀ the same day (lag 0) was 1.7% [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.2%, 2.1%], a cumulative increase of 4.6% (95% CI: 3.7%, 5.6%) over one week (lag 0-6), and a 6.5% (95% CI: 5%, 8%) increase over 2 weeks (lag 0-13). The corresponding pooled effect per 10 μg m^-3 increase in NO_x and ozone were 2.8% (95% CI: 1.6%, 4.1%) and 0.7% (95% CI: 0%, 1.4%) over 2 weeks (lag 0-13), respectively.

Conclusions: Our study revealed short-term associations between air pollution, especially PM₁₀, and purchases of asthma medications.