January 20, 2026

expert reaction to study on the association between long-term air pollution exposure and risk of Motor Neurone Disease

A study published in JAMA Neurology looks at exposure to air pollution and the risk of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). 

Dr Brian Dickie, Chief Scientist, MND Association, said:

“This is a well performed study indicating an association between long-term exposure to higher air pollution levels and a small, but notable, increased risk of developing MND, as well as faster disease progression, although these observations were not consistent across all subtypes of MND.

“It is important to stress that ‘correlation’ does not mean ‘causation’ – and indeed, findings from previous research on the effects of air pollution have been inconsistent. The researchers are therefore cautious with their interpretation of the results, acknowledging that potential confounding factors, together with a lack of some additional data, prevent strong conclusions being made. For example, key information on the delay between symptom onset and diagnosis, which is known to be strongly linked to rate of disease progression, was not available.

“We know that the vast majority of cases of MND are likely to occur through a combination of potentially many genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Scandinavian countries are known to have particularly high proportion of some genetic risk factors for MND within the population but, unfortunately, genetic data was not available for this study. These results point to the importance of integrating genetic information into future epidemiology studies, if we are to make genuine and significant inroads in understanding the causes of MND.”

‘Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Risk and Prognosis of Motor Neuron Disease’ by Jing Wu et al. was published in JAMA Neurology at 16:00 UK time on Tuesday 20 January 2026. 

DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2025.5379

Declared interests

Dr Brian Dickie: “no DOIs.”