Pesticide Exposure in Relation to the Incidence of Abnormal Glucose Regulation: A Retrospective Cohort Study

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 12; p. 7550
• Main Authors: Kim, Sung-Kyung, Oh, Hyun-Jung, Oh, Sung-Soo, Koh, Sang-Baek
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 20.06.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Agricultural production; Agriculture; Cardiovascular disease; Cohort analysis; Confidence intervals; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Disease prevention; Drug dosages; Epidemiology; Exposure; Farms; Glucose; Health risks; Herbicides; Insecticides; Longitudinal studies; Pesticides; Population; Questionnaires; Risk assessment; Rural areas; Rural populations; Statistical analysis; South Korea
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19127550

Diabetes and prediabetes (called abnormal glucose regulation (AGR)) are adverse health effects associated with exposure to pesticides. However, there are few epidemiological studies on the relationship between pesticide use and the incidence of AGR. We examined the causal relationship between pesticide use and AGR incidence in a rural population using data from a Korean Farmers’ Cohort study of 1076 participants. Poisson regression with robust error variance was used to calculate the relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to estimate the relationship between pesticide exposure and AGR. The incidence of AGR in the pesticide-exposed group was 29.1%. Pesticide use increased the RR of AGR (RR 1.32, 95% CI 1.03–1.69). We observed a low-dose effect related to exposure of pesticides to AGR and a U-shaped dose–response relationship in men. Pesticide exposure is related to the incidence of AGR, and the causal relationship differs between men and women.