Children are more likely to be hospitalised for asthma complications during a heatwave, a problem that is expected to get worse with climate change
By Sonali Roy
19 May 2024
Hot temperatures can lead to ozone pollution, which irritates the airways of people with asthma
Lopolo/Shutterstock
Hot weather appears to be triggering more frequent hospital visits for children with asthma.
Symptoms of the lung condition, such as breathlessness and wheezing, are more commonly associated with cold weather. To better understand the impact of hot temperatures, Morgan Ye at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and her colleagues studied electronic health data from UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals.
The data included records on asthma hospitalisations and the patients’ addresses. The researchers used information from PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University to obtain temperature records at the patients’ homes every day from June to September between 2017 and 2020.
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The researchers defined heatwaves in 18 different ways. By looking at the range of temperatures that occurred over these periods, they considered it a heatwave if it fell in the top 1 per cent of these temperatures, or the top 2.5 per cent, or the top 5 per cent, and so on.
Presenting their results at the American Thoracic Society conference in San Diego, California, this week, the researchers found that across all of the heatwave definitions, these temperatures were associated with 19 per cent higher odds, on average, of a child with asthma being admitted to hospital, compared with when there wasn’t a heatwave.