Long-term exposure to summer specific humidity and cardiovascular disease hospitalizations in the US Medicare population.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Most climate-health studies focus on temperature; however, less is known about health effects of exposure to atmospheric moisture. Humid air limits sweat evaporation from the body and can in turn exert strain on the cardiovascular system. We evaluated associations of long-term exposure to summer specific humidity with cardiovascular disease (CVD), coronary heart disease (CHD) and cerebrovascular disease (CBV) hospitalization.

Methods

We built an open cohort consisting of ∼63 million fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries, aged ≥65, living in the contiguous US (2000-2016). We assessed zip code level summer average specific humidity and specific humidity variability, based on daily estimates from the Gridded Surface Meteorological dataset (∼4km spatial resolution)

SUBMITTER: Klompmaker JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10545022 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature