Temperature variability and childhood pneumonia: an ecological study

Environmental Health

Research

Zhiwei Xu¹  Shilu Tong¹  Wenbiao Hu¹ 

[1] School of Public Health and Social Work& Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, 4059, Kelvin Grove, Australia;

关键词: Children;    Pneumonia;    Temperature variability;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-069X-13-51

 received in 2014-01-29, accepted in 2014-06-06,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFew data on the relationship between temperature variability and childhood pneumonia are available. This study attempted to fill this knowledge gap.MethodsA quasi-Poisson generalized linear regression model combined with a distributed lag non-linear model was used to quantify the impacts of diurnal temperature range (DTR) and temperature change between two neighbouring days (TCN) on emergency department visits (EDVs) for childhood pneumonia in Brisbane, from 2001 to 2010, after controlling for possible confounders.ResultsAn adverse impact of TCN on EDVs for childhood pneumonia was observed, and the magnitude of this impact increased from the first five years (2001–2005) to the second five years (2006–2010). Children aged 5–14 years, female children and Indigenous children were particularly vulnerable to TCN impact. However, there was no significant association between DTR and EDVs for childhood pneumonia.ConclusionsAs climate change progresses, the days with unstable weather pattern are likely to increase. Parents and caregivers of children should be aware of the high risk of pneumonia posed by big TCN and take precautionary measures to protect children, especially those with a history of respiratory diseases, from climate impacts.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Xu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. 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 credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.