Investigating the impact of extreme weather events and related indicators on cardiometabolic multimorbidity

Abstract

Abstract Background The impact of weather on human health has been proven, but the impact of extreme weather events on cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) needs to be urgently explored. Objectives Investigating the impact of extreme temperature, relative humidity (RH), and laboratory testing parameters at admission on adverse events in CMM hospitalizations. Designs Time-stratified case-crossover design. Methods A distributional lag nonlinear model with a time-stratified case-crossover design was used to explore the nonlinear lagged association between environmental factors and CMM. Subsequently, unbalanced data were processed by 1:2 propensity score matching (PSM) and conditional logistic regression was employed to analyze the association between laboratory indicators and unplanned readmissions for CMM. Finally, the previously identified environmental factors and relevant laboratory indicators were incorporated into different machine learning models to predict the risk of unplanned readmission for CMM. Results There are nonlinear associations and hysteresis effects between temperature, RH and hospital admissions for a variety of CMM. In addition, the risk of admission is higher under low temperature and high RH conditions with the addition of particulate matter (PM, PM2.5 and PM10) and O3_8h. The risk is greater for females and adults aged 65 and older. Compared with first quartile (Q1), the fourth quartile (Q4) had a higher association between serum calcium (HR = 1.3632, 95% CI: 1.0732 ~ 1.7334), serum creatinine (HR = 1.7987, 95% CI: 1.3528 ~ 2.3958), fasting plasma glucose (HR = 1.2579, 95% CI: 1.0839 ~ 1.4770), aspartate aminotransferase/ alanine aminotransferase ratio (HR = 2.3131, 95% CI: 1.9844 ~ 2.6418), alanine aminotransferase (HR = 1.7687, 95% CI: 1.2388 ~ 2.2986), and gamma-glutamyltransferase (HR = 1.4951, 95% CI: 1.2551 ~ 1.7351) were independently and positively associated with unplanned readmission for CMM. However, serum total bilirubin and High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) showed negative correlations. After incorporating environmental factors and their lagged terms, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) demonstrated a more prominent predictive performance for unplanned readmission of CMM patients, with an average area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.767 (95% CI:0.7486 ~ 0.7854). Conclusions Extreme cold or wet weather is linked to worsened adverse health effects in female patients with CMM and in individuals aged 65 years and older. Moreover, meteorologic factors and environmental pollutants may elevate the likelihood of unplanned readmissions for CMM.

Keywords

• Cardiometabolic multimorbidity
• Extreme weather events
• Time-stratified case-crossover design
• Nonlinear
• Unplanned readmission