Associations of Historic Residential Pesticide Proximity With Proinflammatory Cytokine Levels in a Patient Population...

Residential proximity to commercial pesticide application has been associated with increased odds of developing chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with in vitro studies demonstrating cytotoxic dose-dependent effects on sinonasal epithelia. This study's aim is to determine potential associations between residential proximity to commercial pesticide application sites and cytokine profiles in patients with and without CRS.

A total of 55 patients were included (35 CRS and 20 control) with an average age of 55 ± 15 years. Ambient pesticide exposure was estimated through residential proximity to commercial pesticide applications using a validated computational geographic information system (GIS) algorithm. Sinonasal tissue samples were analyzed by an immune assessment core for 38 cytokine levels. Linear and logistic regression analysis was used to assess potential correlations between pesticide exposure and inflammatory cytokine levels.

A total of 32 (58%) patients resided within 2000 m of any reported commercial pesticide application, including 12 (63%) of the CRSsNP group, 9 (56%) of the CRSwNP group, and 11 (56%) of the control group. Adjusted model 4, which controlled for all covariates listed above, demonstrated associations between pesticide exposure and IL-1α (p = 0.01), TNFβ (p = 0.03), IL-10 (p = 0.03), and IFNα-2 (p = 0.05). When examining CRS and non-CRS participants while stratifying for age, sex, race, smoking history, year of evaluation, and county of residence, an association was found between TNFβ and CRS (p = 0.03) and IL-1α and CRS (p = 0.01), but not IL-10 or IFNα-2 and CRS (p > 0.05).

This study revealed residential proximity to commercial pesticide applications was associated with increased levels of proinflammatory/cytokines with several exposure associations stronger among CRS patients.