Objectives: This study aimed to improve the understanding of seasonal incidence pattern observed in salmonellosis by identifying the most influential weather factors, characterizing the nature of this association, and assessing whether it is geographically restricted or generalizable to other locations.
Methods: A novel statistical model was employed to estimate the incidence of salmonellosis conditional to various combinations of three simultaneous weather factors from 14 available. The analysis utilised daily salmonellosis cases reported from 2000 to 2016 along with detailed spatial and temporal weather data from England and Wales, and the Netherlands.
Disentangling the impact of the weather on transmission of infectious diseases is crucial for health protection, preparedness and prevention. Because weather factors are co-incidental and partly correlated, we have used geography to separate out the impact of individual weather parameters on other seasonal variables using campylobacteriosis as a case study. Campylobacter infections are found worldwide and are the most common bacterial food-borne disease in developed countries, where they exhibit consistent but country specific seasonality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTerrestrial invertebrates are declining globally, yet we still have a poor understanding of how this will influence ecosystem functioning. A new study suggests that the effect might disrupt connections among ecosystem compartments, leading to loss of important ecosystem services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo assess the impacts of ambient temperature on hospitalizations of people experiencing homelessness. We used daily time-series regression analysis employing distributed lag nonlinear models of 148 177 emergency inpatient admissions with "no fixed abode" and 20 804 admissions with a diagnosis of homelessness in London, United Kingdom, in 2011 through 2019. There was a significantly increased risk of hospitalization associated with high temperature; at 25°C versus the minimum morbidity temperature (MMT), relative risks were 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The survival of coronaviruses are influenced by weather conditions and seasonal coronaviruses are more common in winter months. We examine the seasonality of respiratory infections in England and Wales and the associations between weather parameters and seasonal coronavirus cases.
Methods: Respiratory virus disease data for England and Wales between 1989 and 2019 was extracted from the Second-Generation Surveillance System (SGSS) database used for routine surveillance.
Asthma is a complex disease with multiple environmental factors proposed to contribute to aetiology. Geographical analyses can shed light on the determinants of asthma. Ultraviolet radiation has been associated with asthma prevalence in past ecological studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Management of the natural and built environments can help reduce the health impacts of climate change. This is particularly relevant in large cities where urban heat island makes cities warmer than the surrounding areas. We investigate how urban vegetation, housing characteristics and socio-economic factors modify the association between heat exposure and mortality in a large urban area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Campylobacteriosis is a major public health concern. The weather factors that influence spatial and seasonal distributions are not fully understood.
Methods: To investigate the impacts of temperature and rainfall on Campylobacter infections in England and Wales, cases of Campylobacter were linked to local temperature and rainfall at laboratory postcodes in the 30 days before the specimen date.
Background: Telemonitoring of symptoms and physiological signs has been suggested as a means of early detection of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations, with a view to instituting timely treatment. However, algorithms to identify exacerbations result in frequent false-positive results and increased workload. Machine learning, when applied to predictive modelling, can determine patterns of risk factors useful for improving prediction quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many infectious diseases of public health importance display annual seasonal patterns in their incidence. We aimed to systematically document the seasonality of several human infectious disease pathogens in England and Wales, highlighting those organisms that appear weather-sensitive and therefore may be influenced by climate change in the future.
Methods: Data on infections in England and Wales from 1989 to 2014 were extracted from the Public Health England (PHE) SGSS surveillance database.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
May 2018
The major circulating metabolite of vitamin D (25(OH)D) has been implicated in the pathogenesis for atopic dermatitis, asthma and other allergic diseases due to downstream immunomodulatory effects. However, a consistent association between 25(OH)D and asthma during adulthood has yet to be found in observational studies. We aimed to test the association between 25(OH)D and asthma during adulthood and hypothesised that this association would be stronger in non-atopic participants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: To understand the impact of weather on infectious diseases, information on weather parameters at patient locations is needed, but this is not always accessible due to confidentiality or data availability. Weather parameters at nearby locations are often used as a proxy, but the accuracy of this practice is not known.
Methods: Daily Campylobacter and Cryptosporidium cases across England and Wales were linked to local temperature and rainfall at the residence postcodes of the patients and at the corresponding postcodes of the laboratory where the patient's specimen was tested.
Background: There is increasing policy interest in the potential for vegetation in urban areas to mitigate harmful effects of air pollution on respiratory health. We aimed to quantify relationships between tree and green space density and asthma-related hospitalisations, and explore how these varied with exposure to background air pollution concentrations.
Methods: Population standardised asthma hospitalisation rates (1997-2012) for 26,455 urban residential areas of England were merged with area-level data on vegetation and background air pollutant concentrations.
It is thought that variation in natural light levels affect people with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Several meteorological factors related to luminance can be forecast but little is known about which factors are most indicative of worsening SAD symptoms. The aim of this meteorological analysis is to determine which factors are linked to SAD symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Given the double jeopardy of global increases in rates of obesity and climate change, it is increasingly important to recognise the dangers posed to diabetic patients during periods of extreme weather. We aimed to characterise the associations between ambient temperature and general medical practitioner consultations made by a cohort of type-2 diabetic patients. Evidence on the effects of temperature variation in the primary care setting is currently limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExposure to pollen can contribute to increased hospital admissions for asthma exacerbation. This study applied an ecological time series analysis to examine associations between atmospheric concentrations of different pollen types and the risk of hospitalization for asthma in London from 2005 to 2011. The analysis examined short-term associations between daily pollen counts and hospital admissions in the presence of seasonal and long-term patterns, and allowed for time lags between exposure and admission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Estimating the long-term health impact of air pollution in a spatio-temporal ecological study requires representative concentrations of air pollutants to be constructed for each geographical unit and time period. Averaging concentrations in space and time is commonly carried out, but little is known about how robust the estimated health effects are to different aggregation functions. A second under researched question is what impact air pollution is likely to have in the future.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHypothesis: Changes in the weather influence symptom severity in Ménière's disease (MD).
Background: MD is an unpredictable condition that significantly impacts on quality of life. It is suggested that fluctuations in the weather, especially atmospheric pressure may influence the symptoms of MD.
Background: Improved data linkages between diverse environment and health datasets have the potential to provide new insights into the health impacts of environmental exposures, including complex climate change processes. Initiatives that link and explore big data in the environment and health arenas are now being established.
Objectives: To encourage advances in this nascent field, this article documents the development of a web browser application to facilitate such future research, the challenges encountered to date, and how they were addressed.
The health impact of long-term exposure to air pollution is now routinely estimated using spatial ecological studies, owing to the recent widespread availability of spatial referenced pollution and disease data. However, this areal unit study design presents a number of statistical challenges, which if ignored have the potential to bias the estimated pollution-health relationship. One such challenge is how to control for the spatial autocorrelation present in the data after accounting for the known covariates, which is caused by unmeasured confounding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: There is evidence that populations living close to the coast have improved health and wellbeing. Coastal environments are linked to promotion of physical activity through provision of safe, opportune, aesthetic and accessible spaces for recreation. Exposure to coastal environments may also reduce stress and induce positive mood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Healthy Outlook is a service delivered by the UK Met Office directly to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that has been in place since 2006. Its objective is to reduce the severity and length of COPD exacerbations, hence improving the quality of life and life expectancy.
Aims: To assess the effect of the Healthy Outlook service on hospital admission rates of all general practitioners that have used the service.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
February 2014
Linking environmental, socioeconomic and health datasets provides new insights into the potential associations between climate change and human health and wellbeing, and underpins the development of decision support tools that will promote resilience to climate change, and thus enable more effective adaptation. This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities presented by advances in data collection, storage, analysis, and access, particularly focusing on "data mashups". These data mashups are integrations of different types and sources of data, frequently using open application programming interfaces and data sources, to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for assembling the raw source data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effect of changes in the weather on the respiratory health of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) is unclear. We conducted a prospective study to determine the impact of climate and season on the incidence of viral respiratory infections (VRI) and pulmonary exacerbations (PEx) among adults with CF. Between December 2010 and April 2012, 98 adults with CF were followed for 12 months.
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