Study links microplastics in arterial plaque to fourfold increase in stroke risk

Study links microplastics in arterial plaque to fourfold increase in stroke risk

In a Perspective published today in the inaugural issue of Brain Health (https://doi.org/10.61373/bh026p.0006), an international team of investigators argues that the human microplastic burden has crossed the threshold from environmental concern to brain health emergency. The article appears alongside the launch of Brain Health, a new peer-reviewed journal from Genomic Press dedicated to the science of lifelong brain resilience.

Microplastics Have Reached the Human Brain, and the Concentration Is Worse Than Expected

The numbers came back wrong. Researchers at the University of New Mexico had been methodically working through preserved brain tissue, running the usual analyses on samples drawn from a cohort of donors spanning 2016 to 2024. What they found was not a trace signal or a statistical whisper. The human brain, it turned out, carries microplastic concentrations seven to thirty times higher than matched samples of liver or kidney from the same donors.…