Pesticides applied to crops and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis risk in the U.S.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Environmental exposures are implicated in the etiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Application of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides with neurotoxic properties to crops is permitted in the U.S., however reporting of the quantities is government mandated.

Objective

To identify pesticides that may be associated with ALS etiology for future study.

Methods

We geospatially estimated exposure to crop-applied pesticides as risk factors for ALS in a large de-identified medical claims database, the SYMPHONY Integrated Dataverse®. We extracted residence at diagnosis of ∼26,000 nationally distributed ALS patients, and matched non-ALS controls. We mapped county-level U.S. Geological Survey data on applications of 423 pesticides to estimate local resid

SUBMITTER: Andrew A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10756230 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature