Traffic-related air pollution and transplant failure in the UK

There is limited evidence that exposure to traffic-related air pollution is associated with the development of chronic lung allograft dysfunction and graft failure among lung transplant recipients. In this study we explore associations between traffic related air pollution and transplant failure among solid organ transplant recipients in Great Britain. We included all first lung, heart, liver and kidney transplants in Great Britain between 2000 and 2008. For each transplant recipient we used ESCAPE methods to model annual average air pollution exposure including nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5, PMcoarse) for residential postcodes at time of transplant. We also included distance from residential postcode to nearest road and to nearest major road as well as traffic intensity on nearest major road. We fitted Cox regression models to assess associations between each air pollutant and transplant failure after adjustment for age, sex, socioeconomic and donor age/smoking sta...