Climatic effect on rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to investigate the relationship between climatic changes and hospital admissions that are registered as rheumatoid arthritis according to ICD-10 coding registry at the Atatürk University Hospital, located in Erzurum city center. Material and Methods: The study included 3 033 193 patients presenting to the Atatürk University Hospital outpatient clinics, including emergency admissions between January 2008 and December 2011. Data from 2 151 952 cases (70.9% of total applications) aged between 18-105 years were included in the study. A total of 29 966 patients who were registered as RA (ICD 10 code M06) or seropositive RA (ICD 10 code M05), according the ICD-10 coding registry system, were selected. Statistical analyses were run to find out a possible relationship between daily number of hospital admissions due to RA or seropositive RA and studied climatic parameters. Results: The mean age was 47.06±16.3 years. Yearly mean relative humidity and mean atmospheric pressure was 68.1±13.96 %, and 822.73±5.97 hPa respectively. Yearly median temperature, precipitation, and wind speed was 5.88 (-27.9-24.9; 6.9)°C, 3.90 (0.1-28.0; 1.0) kg/m2, and 3.73 (0.3-12.5; 2.7) m/sec, respectively. Pearson's correlation analysis showed a significant but weak positive correlation between the number of admissions and precipitation, as well as wind speed, and a weak negative correlation with atmospheric pressure (r and p; 0.161 and <0.001; 0.122 and 0.011; -0.065 and 0.040, respectively). There was no correlation between the number of RA patients and temperature, relative humidity, and wind directions (p>0.05). In linear regression analysis, wind speed was a significant independent variable affecting the daily number of admissions of RA patients (p<0.001). Conclusion: The relationship between meteorological variables and daily admissions to hospital outpatient clinics due to RA is weak. © 2013 by Türkiye Klinikleri.