Birth season is an important factor that reflects prenatal nutritional conditions during early development, and which might have lifelong impacts on health. Moreover, ambient ozone pollution has been considered an important environmental risk factor for hypertension. However, whether birth season affects vulnerability to the effect of ambient ozone exposure on late-life hypertension is still unknown. A flexible case-crossover design was used to explore the effect of ambient ozone exposure on the disease burden of hypertension using years of life lost (YLL) in the elderly population in a coastal city in South China from 2013 to 2016. The influence of birth season was also explored. Ozone exposure was significantly associated with increased YLL from hypertension. The association was higher in the elderly individuals who were born in autumn than in those born in other seasons. Specifically, every 10 μg/m3 increase in ozone was associated with 0.68 (95% CI: 0.27, 1.10) YLL from hypertension in the elderly population born in autumn, while nonsignificant associations were found for those born in other seasons. The birth season, which affects the nutritional condition during early development, could affect vulnerability to the effect of ambient ozone exposure on the disease burden of hypertension in late life. The findings highlighted the importance of taking birth season into consideration when exploring the hypertensive effects of ozone exposure.
Keywords: birth season; disease burden; hypertension; ozone; years of life lost.