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The association between drought and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases in four northwest cities of China

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Abstract

Drought is a devastating natural hazard that significantly affects human health and social and economic activities. This study aims to explore the short-term association between drought and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases (RDs) in four northwest cities, China. In this study, we obtained daily outpatient visits for RDs, meteorological factors, and air pollutant data in four cities (Lanzhou from 2014 to 2016, Wuwei from 2016 to 2018, Tianshui and Zhangye from 2015 to 2018) of northwest China. We used the daily Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) as an indicator of drought and estimated the effects of drought on outpatient visits with RDs by using a generalized additive model (GAM) in each city, controlling for daily temperature, time trends, and other confounding factors. The city-specific estimates were pooled by random-effects meta-analysis. There were 1,134,577 RDs cases in the hospitals across the four cities. We found that a 1-unit decrease in daily exposure to SPI-1 was positively associated with daily outpatient visits for RDs, with estimated RR of 1.0230 (95% CIs: 1.0096, 1.0366). Compared to non-drought periods, the RR of daily outpatient visits for RDs for exposure to all drought conditions was 1.0431 (95% CIs: 1.0309, 1.0555). In subgroup analysis, the estimated effects of drought on outpatient visits for RDs appeared larger for males than females though not statistically different, and the estimated effects in children and adolescents were the greatest among different age groups. Drought likely increases the risk of respiratory diseases, particularly among children and adolescents. We highlight that public health adaptations to drought such as drought monitoring, mitigation measures, and adaptation strategies are necessary.

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Data availability

The meteorological datasets and air pollutant datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the open-access websites. The meteorological datasets of Lanzhou were from the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau. All data on outpatient visits for respiratory diseases were obtained from hospitals, which were confirmed and permitted by hospitals and related health departments.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Lanzhou University, China (lzujbky-Stain et al., 1982-ey07), National Natural Science Foundation of China (4187050043), and Soft Science Special Project of Gansu Province (20CX4ZA028).

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  1. Bo Wang and Shunxia Wang are contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Occupational Health and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Bo Wang, Lanyu Li, Jingping Niu & Bin Luo

  2. Department of General Medicine, The First Hospital of Tianshui, Tianshui, Gansu, 741000, People’s Republic of China

    Shunxia Wang

  3. Medical College of Hexi University, Zhangye, Gansu, 734000, People’s Republic of China

    Shenggang Xu

  4. Institute of Toxicology, School of Public Health, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Chengyun Li

  5. The First People’s Hospital of Lanzhou, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730050, People’s Republic of China

    Sheng Li

  6. School of Basic Medicine, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Jinyu Wang

  7. Gansu Provincial Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730000, People’s Republic of China

    Hupeng He

  8. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University at Albany, State University of New York, One University Place, Rensselaer, NY, 12144, USA

    Kai Zhang

  9. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Meteorology and Health, Shanghai Meteorological Bureau, Shanghai, 200030, People’s Republic of China

    Bin Luo

  10. Shanghai Typhoon Institute, China Meteorological Administration, Shanghai, 200030, People’s Republic of China

    Bin Luo

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  1. Bo Wang
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Wang, B., Wang, S., Li, L. et al. The association between drought and outpatient visits for respiratory diseases in four northwest cities of China. Climatic Change 167, 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03152-7

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