Exposure to extremely hot or cold temperatures increases the risk of death in heart disease patients, according to a new study conducted. The study was recently reported in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation temperatures increases risk heart failure deaths.
A global analysis of more than 32 million cardiovascular deaths over four decades found that temperatures were at their highest or lowest on days with average climate days.
Among cardiovascular disease types, people with heart disease were more likely to be negatively affected by very cold and very hot days, with a 12% higher risk of dying on extremely hot days than on days with optimal temperatures in a given city. Extreme cold increases the risk of death from heart failure by 37%.
The findings are based on an analysis of health data on more than 32 million cardiovascular deaths that occurred between 1979 and 2019 in 567 cities in 27 countries on 5 continents. Interpretation of extreme weather varies from city to city.
Heart failure deaths
This was specified as the top 1% or bottom 1% of the so-called, “lowest mortality temperature”, which is the temperature at which the lowest mortality was found.
- For each 1,000 cardiovascular deaths, the analysts found that:
- Extreme hot days (above 86 °F in Baltimore) accounted for 2.2 excess deaths.
- Extremely cold days (below 20 °F in Baltimore) reported 9.1 additional deaths.
- Among heart disease types, heart failure (2.6 excess deaths on extremely hot days and 12.8 on extremely
- cold days) found the highest number of excess deaths.
Weather extremes have been discovered at both ends of the spectrum as a result of climate change. A 2021 study published in the journal Science found that Arctic warming has altered events by disrupting the polar vortex creating periods of extreme cold in the Northern Hemisphere.
Barrak Alahmad, MD, Ph.D., Harvard T.H. Its research fellow was a faculty member at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University in Boston and the corresponding author of the study was a faculty part at the College of Public Health at Kuwait University in Kuwait City.
Dr. Khraishah and Dr. Alahmad have measured over the past four years to create a database of heart disease deaths for this study with collaborators from more than 35 institutions worldwide.
The group developed and expanded the Heart Disease Mortality Data Base as a feature of the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Cooperative Research Organization. It is known as a consortium of biostatisticians, epidemiologists and climate scientists studying the effects of climate on health and environmental stressors related to mortality.
The scientists also considered humidity and air pollution, which may be responsible for excess deaths in places with temperature extremes. In addition, they control the delayed effect (lag effect) of temperature on climate zones and human health.