Weather temperature and the incidence of hospitalization for cardiovascular diseases in an aging society

Abstract

Weather temperatures affect the incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but there is limited information on whether CVD hospitalizations are affected by changes in weather temperatures in a super-aging society. We aimed to examine the association of diurnal weather temperature changes with CVD hospitalizations. We included 1,067,171 consecutive patients who were admitted to acute-care hospitals in Japan between April 1, 2012 and March 31, 2015. The primary outcome was the number of CVD hospitalizations per day. The diurnal weather temperature range (DTR) was defined as the minimum weather temperature subtracted from the maximum weather temperature on the day before hospitalization. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression models were used to estimate the association of DTR with cardiovascular hospitalizations after adjusting for weather, hospital, and patient demographics. An increased DTR was associated with a higher number of CVD hospitalizations (coefficient, 4.540 [4.310–4.765]/°C change, p < 0.001), with greater effects in those aged 75–89 (p < 0.001) and ≥ 90 years (p = 0.006) than among those aged ≤ 64 years; however, there were no sex-related differences (p = 0.166). Greater intraday weather temperature changes are associated with an increased number of CVD hospitalizations in the super-aging society of Japan, with a greater effect in older individuals.