Dales R, et al. - As idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) induces progressive dyspnea, hypoxemia, and caused death within a few years, researchers here sought to determine the effect of air pollution on disease exacerbations. Using the International Classification of Disease, 10th Revision, they coded hospital admissions for IPF as J84.1. They tested a linear association between daily ambient air pollution and daily J84.1 hospital admissions using generalized linear models employing ambient air pollution and climate data from seven air monitoring stations spread in the seven urban centers in Santiago Chile, along with daily patient hospitalization data from 2001 to 2012. Outcomes support that for patients with a primary diagnosis of IPF, acute increases in air pollution are a risk factor for hospitalization. In the two-pollutant models, the persistent significance of NO₂ and PM₁₀ was observed despite adjustments for each of the other measured pollutants.