Diurnal temperature range and childhood asthma: a time-series study

Environmental Health

Research

Cunrui Huang¹  Hong Su²  Zhiwei Xu³  Lyle R Turner³  Shilu Tong³  Zhen Qiao³ 

[1] Centre for Environment and Population Health, School of Environment, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia;Department of Health Statistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China;School of Public Health and Social Work& Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Australia;

关键词: Climate change;    Diurnal temperature range;    Childhood asthma;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-069X-12-12

 received in 2012-11-13, accepted in 2013-01-29,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundHot and cold temperatures have been associated with childhood asthma. However, the relationship between daily temperature variation and childhood asthma is not well understood. This study aimed to examine the relationship between diurnal temperature range (DTR) and childhood asthma.MethodsA Poisson generalized linear model combined with a distributed lag non-linear model was used to examine the relationship between DTR and emergency department admissions for childhood asthma in Brisbane, from January 1st 2003 to December 31st 2009.ResultsThere was a statistically significant relationship between DTR and childhood asthma. The DTR effect on childhood asthma increased above a DTR of 10°C. The effect of DTR on childhood asthma was the greatest for lag 0–9 days, with a 31% (95% confidence interval: 11% – 58%) increase of emergency department admissions per 5°C increment of DTR. Male children and children aged 5–9 years appeared to be more vulnerable to the DTR effect than others.ConclusionsLarge DTR may trigger childhood asthma. Future measures to control and prevent childhood asthma should include taking temperature variability into account. More protective measures should be taken after a day of DTR above10°C.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Xu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. 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.