The Association of Premature Ovarian Failure (POF) and Air Pollution in Korea Based on Health Insurance Cohort Data

摘要

[Background] Recently prevalence of premature ovarian failure (POF) continues to increase in Korea and we found that Kwanwon province showed the highest POF prevalence among sixteen provinces. The purpose of this study is to find the hot spot areas among 234 administrative districts with significant variables associated with POF prevalence. [Methods] We used the customized cohort DB from 2004 to 2013 provided by National Health Insurance Corporation. The total number of women in DB was 556,467 and the number of POF patients was 4,870. We estimated the POF prevalence in each districts and hot spot analysis was done to find the POF clusters. And we also evaluated the association between POF prevalence and environmental factors including air pollution data from air monitoring data with drinking, smoking, obesity, stress, education, income, number of visits to clinics and hospitals from National Health Examination Survey data. [Results] Hot spot analysis showed highest areas including five districts in Kangwon and Gyeongsangbukdo provinces. And there were lowest areas, cold spot, including nine districts in Chungchung provinces. And only air pollution data including NO2, 0$3PM10 showed significantly associated with POF prevalence. We did the same analysis after excluding Kangwon province for reducing possibility of genetic effects of regional residents. OLS regression showed that NO2 and 03 were significantly associated with POF prevalence and there was no hot spot area after excluding Kangwon province. [Conclusion] The further study is needed to evaluate the association between POF prevalence and air pollution with distribution of POF related genes among residents in hot spot areas. [Acknowledgment] This work was supported by the Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) as The Environmental Health Action Program (2016001360007).