title: The effects of air pollution on cardiovascular diseases: lag structures.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the lag structure between air pollution exposure and elderly cardiovascular diseases hospital admissions, by gender.
  
  
  METHODS
  Health data of people aged 64 years or older was stratified by gender in São Paulo city, Southeastern Brazil, from 1996 to 2001. Daily levels of air pollutants (CO, PM10, O3, NO2, and SO2) , minimum temperature, and relative humidity were also analyzed. It were fitted generalized additive Poisson regressions and used constrained distributed lag models adjusted for long time trend, weekdays, weather and holidays to assess the lagged effects of air pollutants on hospital admissions up to 20 days after exposure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Interquartile range increases in PM10 (26.21 microg/m(3)) and SO2 (10.73 microg/m(3)) were associated with 3.17% (95% CI: 2.09-4.25) increase in congestive heart failure and 0.89% (95% CI: 0.18-1.61) increase in total cardiovascular diseases at lag 0, respectively. Effects were higher among female group for most of the analyzed outcomes. Effects of air pollutants for different outcomes and gender groups were predominately acute and some "harvesting" were found.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results show that cardiovascular diseases in São Paulo are strongly affected by air pollution.
authors.affiliation: Desciplina de Saú da Coletiva, deFaculdade de Medicina do ABC, Santo André, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: Lourdes Conceição
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Luiz A A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.forename: Chin A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Ubiratan P
authors.initials: UP
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.forename: Gildeoni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Prioli
authors.forename: Olinda do Carmo
authors.initials: Odo C
authors.lastname: Luiz
authors.forename: Paulo H N
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Saldiva
authors.forename: Alfésio Luís Ferreira
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Braga
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000032:analysis; D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D005740:Gases / Q000032:analysis; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D006813:Humidity; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017202:Myocardial Ischemia / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D017678:Sex Distribution; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013696:Temperature; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D005740:Gases