http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168827815005115.
"Our work has a major impact on medical care and health policy-making for the populations under air pollution environment," Dr. Zhang said, "Liver fibrosis is an advanced stage of chronic liver injuries caused by chronic hepatitis viral infection, obesity, alcoholism or autoimmune diseases. Our work defined that air pollution, specifically PM2.5 pollutant, is an independent risk factor of liver fibrosis. This is very significant in terms of identifying new health risk factors and understanding liver diseases. The molecular and cellular mechanisms we revealed in this work have very important implications in clinical disease diagnosis and treatment associated with air pollution."
The liver is an important target organ and a key player in disease development under high-level PM2.5 exposure. Automobile drivers who experience long-time daily road traffic and car manufacturing employees should pay more attention to the markers or liver enzymes that indicate liver disease, Dr. Zhang said. "Physicians or health care professionals should monitor liver pathology and consider preventive therapeutic strategies for liver disease for populations and patients in urban air pollution environments."
Previous publications from the Zhang group related to the effects of air pollution on the liver were the subjects of editorial focus or commentary in the American Journal of Physiology and Journal of Hepatology.
Dr. Zhang is the project's principal investigator. Other researchers at the Wayne State University School of Medicine who contributed to this work include the paper's first author, Ze Zheng, Ph.D., and Xuebao Zhang, research associate; Jiemei Wang, Ph.D., assistant professor of Molecular Medicine and Genetics; Aditya Dandekar, Ph.D.; Hyunbae Kim, research associate; and Yining Qiu; Ph.D. The project is funded by that National Institutes of Health's National Environmental Health Science Institute (grant Nos. ES017829, ES018900, ES019616), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (grant No. DK090313), and American Heart Association grants (grant No. 0635423Z, 09GRNT2280479).