CAM Approaches to Air Pollution Related Health Effects

描述（由申请人提供）：空气污染，特别是柴油废气（DE），与美国四大死亡原因相关：心脏病、癌症、中风和慢性下呼吸道疾病。尽管这些情况普遍存在，而且在城市和职业环境中暴露于DE的程度很大，但很少有人尝试以生物学为基础来阻止急性或慢性暴露的影响。氧化应激是空气污染引起的不良健康影响的作用机制中的流行理论。抗氧化剂，身体对氧化应激的防御，通常被CAM从业者用来预防和减少暴露于污染物的不良后果。本研究申请旨在检查CAM产品（谷胱甘肽（GSH））和模型（预防），以减少DE暴露诱导的氧化应激。UW暴露实验室提供了一个无与伦比的机会，以检查CAM干预措施，以增强人类对DE的反应。这项嵌套研究应用是一项双盲、安慰剂对照、交叉实验，旨在确定吸入GSH是否可以减弱与受控DE暴露相关的氧化应激。虽然生物学基础，科学合理，目前在CAM社区使用，这种有前途的干预缺乏特定的证据。本研究的长期目标是严格审查潜在的CAM干预措施，以增加污染物引起的不良健康影响，造成持续的公共卫生负担。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Air pollution, specifically diesel exhaust (DE), is associated with the top four causes of mortality in the United States: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. In spite of the prevalence of these conditions and magnitude of DE exposure in ambient urban and occupational environments, few biologically based attempts have been made to thwart the effects of acute or chronic exposures. Oxidative stress is a prevailing theory in the mechanism of action of air pollutant-induced adverse health effects. Antioxidants, the body's defense against oxidative stress, are commonly employed by CAM practitioners to prevent and reduce the adverse consequences of exposure to pollutants. This research application is intended to examine a CAM product (glutathione (GSH)) and model (prevention) in an attempt to reduce oxidative stress induced by DE exposure. The UW exposure laboratory offers an unparalleled opportunity to examine CAM interventions in augmenting human responses to DE. This nested research application is a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over experiment to determine if inhaled GSH can blunt the observed oxidative stress associated with controlled DE exposure. While biologically based, scientifically plausible, and currently used in the CAM community, this promising intervention lacks exposure-specific evidence. The long-term objective of this research is to rigorously examine potential CAM interventions in augmenting adverse health effects induced by pollutants that pose a substantial ongoing public health burden.