What this means
Researchers followed about 400,000 UK adults and tracked air benzene where they lived. Higher long-term benzene went with more new fatty liver disease, but this does not prove benzene caused it.
Plain-English summary written by an AI model from the abstract. The original is below.
- Who it was tested in
- 401,472 adults in the UK Biobank
- Kind of research
- A study
The science
- Original title
- Long-term ambient benzene exposure increases incident NAFLD risk through accelerated biological aging.
- Authors
- Li Y, Peng Z, Zhang J et al.
- Journal
- iScience
- Published
- Oct 13, 2026
- Study type
- Study
- PMID
- 42866231 ↗
Abstract
The contribution of ambient air pollutants to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) remains undefined. This study included 401,472 adults from the UK Biobank (UKB), with residential benzene estimated at 1-km resolution from the DEFRA model (2006-2020). After multivariable adjustment in the Cox models, each interquartile-range (0.151 μg/m3) increment in benzene was associated with a 26% higher risk of incident NAFLD (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.26; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.21-1.30), following a nonlinear exposure-response relationship. Accelerated biological aging mediated 6.5% of this association, whereas homeostatic dysregulation and allostatic load contributed modestly. Benzene exposure and polygenic risk showed no multiplicative interaction, but their cumulative effect raised NAFLD risk among highly susceptible individuals. A machine-learning model integrating benzene and covariates predicted NAFLD with good discrimination (AUC = 0.753), and an external urinary-biomarker analysis in NHANES was directionally consistent. Thus, long-term low-level benzene exposure increases incident NAFLD risk, partly through accelerated biological aging.
Li Y, Peng Z, Zhang J et al. Long-term ambient benzene exposure increases incident NAFLD risk through accelerated biological aging. iScience. 2026. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2026.117035. PMID: 42866231. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42866231/