Exposure to air pollution and meteorological factors associated with children’s primary care visits at night due to asthma attack: case-crossover design for 3-year pooled patients

Abstract

ObjectiveWe examined the association of outdoor air pollution and meteorological parameters with primary care visits (PCVs) at night due to asthma attack.SettingA case-crossover study was conducted in a primary care clinic in Himeji City, Japan.ParticipantsParticipants were 1447 children aged 0–14 years who visited the clinic with an asthma attack from April 2010 until March 2013.ExposureDaily concentrations of air pollutants and meteorological parameters were measured.Primary outcomePCVs at night due to asthma attack. A conditional logistic regression model was used to estimate ORs of PCVs per unit increment of air pollutants or meteorological parameters (the per-unit increments of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 µm (PM2.5) and ozone were 10 μg/m3 and 10 ppb, respectively). Analyses took into consideration the effects of seasonality.ResultsWe noted an association between PCVs and daily ozone levels on the day before a PCV (OR=1.17; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.35; p=0.04), as well as between PCVs and 3-day mean ozone levels before a PCV (OR=1.29; 95% CI 1.00 to 1.46; p=0.04), from April until June. We also observed an association between PCVs and daily PM2.5 levels on the day before a PCV from December until March (OR=1.16; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.33; p=0.05). Meteorological parameters, such as hours of sunshine from September until November, atmospheric pressure from April until June, and temperature from April until August, were also found to be associated with PCVs.ConclusionsThe findings in the present study supported an association between ozone and PCVs and suggest that certain meteorological items may be associated with PCVs.

Air Pollutants, Climate, and the Prevalence of Pediatric Asthma in Urban Areas of China

“…As mentioned above, our data were available on annual mean relative humidity, not including minimum or maximum relative humidity and other parameters. And our results indicate that hours of sunshine is a protective factor with the prevalence of asthma in the cities studied, which is consistent with results reported by recent epidemiological studies [ 11 , 28 – 30 , 34 ]. In addition, a recent analysis of ISAAC data supports the argument that there exists a negative relationship between the prevalence of asthma and the mean annual sunny hours at a community level within centers [ 35 ].…”

Personal exposure to fine particulate matter concentrations in central business district of a tropical coastal city

“…In the past epidemiological studies, the daily hospital admissions were correlated with daily PM concentrations to understand the association between air pollution and health effects (Lin et al 2003;Schwartz and Dockery 1992). On a smaller time scale, the influences of air pollution and meteorology were clearly established in the past studies (Jhun et al 2015;Yamazaki et al 2015). Even though the hospital visits may also depend on several other factors, viz., day of week, holidays, or epidemic outbreak, such analysis could not be carried out in the present study due to the lack of daily health data.…”

The effect of ambient temperature on type-2-diabetes: case-crossover analysis of 4+ million GP consultations across England

“…Most recently, primary care visits for asthma by children were shown to be elevated during summer months in Japan [17]; and in the UK population a spike in GP activity was observed during an individual heat-wave period using syndromic surveillance data [18]. Although the present study did not consider heat impacts on all primary care consultations, our results are likely to be specific to diabetic patients since previous work observed no increased risk of consultation among other patient groups during the 2013 heat-wave [19].…”