Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Incidence of Venous Thromboembolism in the General Population: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is true that, as stated by the authors, there are relatively few epidemiological studies that did evaluate whether or not there is an association between air pollution and venous thromboembolism. Thus, this article stemming from the analysis of a large population in Korea is interesting and well written in a rather concise way. However, the analysis of the admittedly scant literature does not take into account a few very recent manuscripts from Italy that the authors should read, cite and discuss

Author Response

→ Thank you for your comment. As your comment, we added them in our discussion (line 274-277).

(line 274-277) Two recent studies by Renzi et al. showed positive association between both long term and short-term exposure of PM2.5 and risk of VTE.[11] [12] But these findings were confined to the effects of PM2.5. Therefore, the effect of gaseous substances like CO, SO2, and O3 on VTE is not clear.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments on the manuscript jcm-1737964, entitled "Long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of venous thromboembolism in the general population: A population-based retrospective cohort study", by J.G. Gwon, S.A. Lee, S.U. Oh, J.S. Kim, H.-M. Seo, submitted to the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

This is a very good work, presenting a study evaluating the relationship between air pollutants and the incidence venous thromboembolism, taking information from the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Health 21 Screening Cohort (NHIS-HEALS) database and measurements of different air pollutants.

I consider that this analysis is relevant to the scientific community.

Author Response

→ We are very grateful for your comment.