The Climate Impacts on Myocardial infarction deaths in the Athens Territory (The CLIMATE study)

Polychronis E Dilaveris ^1*, Andreas Synetos ¹, Georgios Giannopoulos ¹, Elias Gialafos ¹, Antonios Pantazis ¹ and Christodoulos Stefanadis ¹

¹ Hippokration Hospital, Athens, Greece

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hrodil{at}yahoo.com.

Accepted 2 June 2006

Abstract

Objective: Aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of meteorological variables on daily and monthly deaths due to acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

Methods: We analyzed all death certificate data from Athens territory, for AMI deaths in 2001. Daily atmospheric temperature, pressure and relative humidity data was obtained from the National Meteorological Society for Athens for the same year.

Results: The total annual number of deaths due to AMI was 3126 (1953 males) from a population of 2,664,776 (0.117%). Significant seasonal variation in deaths, with the average daily AMI deaths in winter being 31.8% higher compared to summer (9. 89 vs. 7.35, p<0.001), was found. Monthly variation was more pronounced for older persons (mean daily AMI deaths of persons above 70 years old 3.53 in June and 7.03 in December: p<0.001) and of only marginal significance for younger individuals. The best predictor of daily AMI deaths was the average temperature of the previous 7 days; the relation between daily AMI deaths and 7-day average temperature (R2=0.109, p<0.001) was U-shaped. Considering monthly AMI death rates, only mean monthly humidity was independently associated with total deaths from AMI (R2 = 0.541, p =0.004).

Conclusion: Ambient temperature is an important predictor of AMI mortality even in the mild climate of a Mediterranean city like Athens, its effects being predominantly evident in the elderly. Mean monthly humidity is another meteorological factor, which appears to affect monthly numbers of AMI deaths. The above findings may be useful for healthcare and civil protection planning.

Keywords: acute myocardial infarction, climate, humidity, mortality, temperature

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