Abstract
BACKGROUND: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease affected by environmental factors. However, the influence of residential environment space on AD has not been well understood. This study aimed to investigate the potential associations between environment space with AD. METHODS: This study analyzed data from 422,899 participants from the UK Biobank, with 2,462 incident cases of AD documented over a median follow-up of 12.45 years. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between residential environment space and the risk of developing AD. RESULTS: The risk of AD was negatively associated with the percentage of green space, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.81 (95% CI: 0.72, 0.91) for the highest quartile within a 300 m buffer. In contrast, the risk was positively associated with exposure to blue space, with a HR of 1.33 (95% CI: 1.19, 1.49) for the highest quartile within a 300 m buffer and 1.62 (95% CI: 1.45, 1.80) within a 1000 m buffer. Joint analysis indicated that participants with high exposure to green space and low exposure to blue space exhibited the lowest risk of developing AD, compared to those with low exposure to green space and high exposure to blue space [300 m buffer: 0.50 (0.31, 0.82); 1000 m buffer: 0.61 (0.46, 0.81)]. CONCLUSION: Higher exposure to green space was found to be protective against AD, while higher exposure to blue space may increase the risk. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-026-26556-5.