Association between Silica Exposure and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Silica exposure is detrimental to health and has, thus, been a global health concern. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of existing articles to assess the involvement of silica exposure in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. Methods: Electronic databases including Web of Sciences, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched for eligible publication until December 2019. The pooled standard mortality ratio (SMR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to detect the association between silica exposure and CVD mortality. Results: The pooled estimates of SMR indicated a nonsignificant association between silica exposure and CVD mortality (SMR: 1.26; 95% CI: 0.88-1.63). The subgroup analysis based on the type of CVD indicated a significant positive association between silica exposure and mortality from hypertensive heart disease (SMR: 2.45; 95% CI: 2.16 -2.74) and pulmonary heart disease (SMR: 4.03; 95% CI: 3.87-4.20). Conclusion: This study confirmed that silica exposure is associated with an enhanced risk of mortality of hypertensive and pulmonary heart diseases. The verification of these results may have important effects on basic preventive strategies for health-care providers. Because of the mismatch in the silica exposure classification, some works in the literature were excluded. Also, the years of silica exposure may be important in CVD mortality. We suggest that these potential confounders be considered in future research.