To evaluate long-term impact of air pollution, noise pollution, and thermal stress on disability worsening in people living with multiple sclerosis in the Greater Paris area
Edouard Januel (Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild; PEPITES team, iPLesp) and Caroline Papeix (Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild), in collaboration with Giovanna Fancello (NEMESIS team, iPLesp), Airparif and Bruitparif, has been awarded funding through the third edition of the call for projects “Health-Environment Data for Research and Innovation”, jointly supported by Green Data for Health and the French Health Data Hub (Plateforme des données de santé, PDS).
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disease affecting approximately 134,000 people in France and typically begins in young adulthood. It is the leading cause of non-traumatic neurological disability among young adults. While the short-term impact of environmental factors such as air pollution and heat exposure is increasingly recognized, their chronic effect on disability progression has not yet been explored.
This project aims to assess the long-term impact of several environmental exposures — air pollution, thermal stress, and noise pollution — on disability progression in MS, defined by the time to irreversible neurological disability (EDSS ≥3). Clinical data from 1,000 patients followed at the Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild within the “MS AND HEALTH” cohort (“SEP ET SANTÉ”) will be linked with annual environmental exposure estimates reconstructed from patients’ successive residential addresses between 2008 and 2026.
This project is innovative because it will explore, for the first time, the combined and chronic effects of multiple environmental exposures on long-term disability progression in MS.