Environmental exposure to pesticides and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in the South of Spain

S Bermudo Fuenmayor; P J Serrano Castro; P Quiroga Subirana; S López Palmero; M Requena Mullor; T Parrón Carreño

doi:10.1016/j.nrl.2021.01.013

Environmental exposure to pesticides and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in the South of Spain

Neurologia (Engl Ed). 2021 Mar 23:S0213-4853(21)00030-X. doi: 10.1016/j.nrl.2021.01.013. Online ahead of print.

[Article in English, Spanish]

Authors

S Bermudo Fuenmayor¹, P J Serrano Castro², P Quiroga Subirana³, S López Palmero⁴, M Requena Mullor⁵, T Parrón Carreño⁶

Affiliations

¹ Servicio de Tocoginecología, Hospital de Poniente, Spain. Electronic address: sarafuenmayor01@hotmail.com.
² Servicio de Neurología en Hospital Regional de Málaga, Spain.
³ Servicio de Neurología en Complejo Hospitalario Torrecárdenas, Spain.
⁴ Servicio de Medicina Interna en Complejo Hospitalario Torrecárdenas, Spain.
⁵ Universidad de Almería, Spain.
⁶ Unidad de Delegación Territorial para la igualdad, salud y políticas sociales, Almería, Spain.

PMID: 33771383
DOI: 10.1016/j.nrl.2021.01.013

Abstract

Objective: To determine if there is a relationship between environmental exposure to pesticides and the prevalence of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in Andalusia.

Method: We carried out a case-control study using the logistic regression method to verify the relationship between the prevalence of ALS in the area exposed to pesticides versus the unexposed area, through the Odds Ratio statistical test.

Results: The study population consisted of 519 individuals diagnosed with ALS between January 2016 and December 2018 according to the CMBD (Minimum Basic Data Set) as cases. In the control group, we have 8,384,083 individuals obtained from data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The Odds Ratio (OR) was used as a measure of association between cases and controls, obtaining an OR between 0.76 and 1.08 for the confidence interval of the CI (95%).

Conclusions: Despite the existence of various studies that suggest a possible association between environmental exposure to pesticides and the risk of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, our analysis of the Andalusian population did not find significant evidence of this association.

Keywords: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; Enfermería; Epidemiology; Epidemiología; Esclerosis lateral amiotrófica; Neurology; Neurología; Nursing; Pesticidas; Pesticides; Toxicology; Toxicología.