Major temperature fluctuations amid unseasonably hot or cold summers and winters are linked to heightened risks of cerebrovascular diseases, National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Public Health researchers said.
The study, published in the latest issue of the Taiwan Journal of Public Health, said that cerebrovascular accidents, or strokes, are not exclusively correlated to sudden drops in temperature, but to increases also, making unseasonably warm winters — such as the one Taiwan is currently experiencing — a period of elevated stroke risk.
The researchers analyzed the medical records of 10,000 cerebrovascular disease patients aged over 51 from the National Health Insurance Administration’s database, cross-referencing the data against which of seven zones the patients lived in from 2003 to 2010.
In many regions, high “relative extreme temperatures” — referring to regional daily temperature variances that were significantly higher than historically derived normal values — exacerbated stroke risk, lead researcher Kate Hsiao (蕭朱杏) said.
For example, in summers of high relative temperature extremes, the number of strokes reported in the Central, Kaohsiung-Pingtung, Yilan and Hualien-Taitung zones increased by 6, 17, 17 and 54 percent respectively, said Hsiao, who is an NTU public health professor.
In winters when relative extremes are high, incidences of strokes in the Kaohsiung-Pingtung, Yilan and Hualien-Taitung zones increased by 9, 9 and 43 percent respectively, she said.
“Some medical literature suggests that inadequate intake of water in high temperature conditions can increase blood viscosity; for elderly people, rapid temperature fluctuations may lead to heightened risks of cerebrovascular accidents, because their ability to adapt to temperature changes tends to be low,” she said.
That regions such as Kaohsiung-Pingtung and Hualien-Taitung have significantly higher temperature-related stroke risk than other zones is speculated to be the result of the lower socioeconomic status of people living there, with those people being less likely to have an adequate knowledge of preventive medicine, Hsiao said.
Taipei Medical University Hospital’s Kao Wei-fong (高偉峰) said that according to experience, both high and low temperature extremes lead to an influx of stroke victims.
Kao, who heads the hospital’s Department of Emergency and Critical Care, said temperatures more than 25°C and below 15°C are particularly troublesome.
Yi Gi-hou (尹居浩), an attending physician in the Neurology Division of Cheng Hsin General Hospital, said that hot temperatures strain the heart by accelerating the metabolism, and therefore temperature fluctuations during winter are likely to induce strokes in people with compromised vascular health.
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