Impact of meteorological variation on hospital visits of patients with tree pollen allergy

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Hae-Sim Park¹  Jae-Yeon Jang²  Si-Heon Kim² 

[1] Department of Allergy and Rheumatology, Ajou University School of Medicine, San-5 Wonchon-dong, Suwon, Youngtong-gu, South Korea;Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Ajou University School of Medicine, San-5 Wonchon-dong, Suwon, Youngtong-gu, South Korea;

关键词: Minimum Temperature;    Allergic Disease;    Skin Prick Test;    House Dust;    Meteorological Variation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-890

 received in 2011-06-27, accepted in 2011-11-24,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundClimate change could affect allergic diseases, especially due to pollen. However, there has been no epidemiologic study to demonstrate the relationship between meteorological factors, pollen, and allergic patients. We aimed to investigate the association between meteorological variations and hospital visits of patients with tree pollen allergy.MethodsThe study subjects were adult patients who received skin prick tests between April and July from 1999 to 2008. We reviewed the medical records for the test results of 4,715 patients. Patients with tree pollen allergy were defined as those sensitized to more than 1 of 12 tree pollen allergens. We used monthly means of airborne tree pollen counts and meteorological factors: maximum/average/minimum temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation. We analyzed the correlations between meteorological variations, tree pollen counts, and the patient numbers. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the associations between meteorological factors and hospital visits of patients.ResultsThe minimum temperature in March was significantly and positively correlated with tree pollen counts in March/April and patient numbers from April through July. Pollen counts in March/April were also correlated with patient numbers from April through July. After adjusting for confounders, including air pollutants, there was a positive association between the minimum temperature in March and hospital visits of patients with tree pollen allergy from April to July(odds ratio, 1.14; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.25).ConclusionsHigher temperatures could increase tree pollen counts, affecting the symptoms of patients with tree pollen allergy, thereby increasing the number of patients visiting hospitals.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kim et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.