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Cardiovascular disease
Asian dust storm events are associated with an acute increase in stroke hospitalisation
  1. Jiunn-Horng Kang1,2,
  2. Tsai-Ching Liu3,
  3. Joseph Keller4,
  4. Herng-Ching Lin5
  1. 1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Taipei Medical University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
  2. 2Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan
  3. 3Department of Public Finance, National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan
  4. 4School of Medical Laboratory Sciences and Biotechnology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan
  5. 5School of Health Care Administration, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan
  1. Correspondence to Professor Herng-Ching Lin, School of Health Care Administration, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, 250 Wu-Hsing St., Taipei 110, Taiwan; henry11111{at}tmu.edu.tw

Abstract

Objective Asian dust storms (ADS) are long-ranged meteorological phenomena, which are suggested to be associated with several health problems. This study aimed to investigate the risk of stroke hospitalisation following ADS events by conducting a population-based study.

Study design and setting The authors identified 810 947 hospitalisations with an admission diagnosis of stroke during the time period between 2000 and 2009 in Taiwan. The ARIMA method (Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average) was used to examine the associations between ADS episodes and the daily number of stroke hospitalisations.

Results There were 46 separate ADS episodes which resulted in a total of 135 ADS days between 2000 and 2009. The Kruskal–Wallis test revealed that there was a significant difference in the mean number of daily stroke admissions among ADS days (239.6), post-ADS days (249.2) and non-ADS days (219.7) (p<0.001). After adjusting for the time-trend effect, ambient temperature, season, SO2 and CO, the authors found post-ADS days 1 and 2 to have a significantly higher number of stroke admission than non-ADS days. Post-ADS days 1 and 2 had significantly higher numbers of ischaemic but not haemorrhagic stroke admissions.

Conclusion The authors conclude that ADS events are associated with an acute increase in stroke admission rates.

  • Asian dust strom
  • stroke
  • hospitalisation
  • metrological
  • access to health care
  • accidents
  • ageing

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2011-200794

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    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.