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The Role of Emerging Environmental Contaminants on Alzheimer’s Disease
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This review examined the role of emerging environmental contaminants, including microplastics, in the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease. The authors discussed mechanisms including oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and blood-brain barrier disruption as potential pathways linking environmental exposures to AD pathogenesis.
According to the latest data from WHO, about 57 million individuals worldwide were living with dementia in 2021, with 10 million new cases diagnosed each year. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) accounts for approximately 60–80% of dementia cases and ranks as the seventh leading cause of death globally. Currently, the therapeutic options available for AD have limited effectiveness, and potential disease-modifying therapies are not widely adopted or reliably deemed safe. Therefore, implementing preventive strategies and raising public awareness about the relevant AD risk factors are crucial. Existing data delineate various risk factors for AD, encompassing non-modifiable factors such as age, genetic predisposition, and gender, alongside modifiable factors including environmental pollution and diet. This chapter aims to explore emerging environmental risk factors that contribute to AD, including air pollution, toxic elements, pesticides, microplastics, nanoplastics, endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, environmental disasters, and global climate change. The intricate and multifaceted nature of neurodegenerative disorders such as AD necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to unravel the underlying mechanisms. This involves the effective application of various omics techniques—such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics—paired with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methods, including machine learning and deep learning.
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Alzheimer’s disease: the role of extrinsic factors in its development, an investigation of the environmental enigma
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This review examines how environmental contaminants, including microplastics, may contribute to Alzheimer's disease risk. Along with air pollutants, toxic metals, and pesticides, plastics and microplastics are identified as potential risk factors that may promote brain inflammation and neurodegeneration. The review explores the molecular mechanisms behind these effects and suggests strategies to reduce the brain health impacts of environmental contaminants.
Microplastics as an emerging environmental pollutant potentially leading to neurodegenerative diseases
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Researchers reviewed how microplastics cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in the central nervous system, cataloguing the mechanistic pathways — oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, protein aggregation — through which they may contribute to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS, while proposing that environmental microplastic detection and removal technologies could be adapted for CNS applications.
A novel risk factor for dementia: chronic microplastic exposure
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This review examines emerging evidence that chronic microplastic exposure may be a previously overlooked risk factor for dementia. Microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and may promote brain damage through oxidative stress, inflammation, and by accelerating the buildup of amyloid plaques linked to Alzheimer's disease, with studies finding higher microplastic levels in the brains of dementia patients compared to controls.
Environmental neurotoxicants as accelerators of brain ageing: exposomic mechanisms linking pollution to amyloidogenesis and Alzheimer's disease.
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This review summarizes existing research on how pollutants, including air pollution, heavy metals, pesticides, and micro- and nanoplastics, may enter the brain and contribute to processes linked to Alzheimer's disease, such as protein buildup and inflammation. The authors note that most evidence comes from lab and animal studies, with limited research so far in humans.
[Environmental pollutants and Alzheimer's disease].
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This review examined how environmental pollutants including heavy metals, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, and microplastics contribute to Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis by promoting beta-amyloid accumulation, tau hyperphosphorylation, and neuroinflammation, suggesting that pollutant exposure is an underappreciated risk factor.
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