Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39391232›Full record

ArticleHygiene and environmental health advances2024

Sex and age characteristics of thunderstorm asthma emergency department visits.

M Luke Smith, Richard F MacLehose, Chris H Wendt, Jesse D Berman

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Hygiene and environmental health advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

M Luke SmithMinnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
Richard F MacLehoseDivision of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
Chris H WendtPulmonary Allergy Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Minneapolis VA Health Care System, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Jesse D BermanDivision of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

Funding

Minnesota Population Center Science and Technical CoreP2CHD041023 · NICHD · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · PI THERESA LOUISE OSYPUK · 2016 to 2026
$4.3M
NICHD NIH HHS P2C HD041023
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Severe asthma has been shown to occur in the combined presence of high pollen and thunderstorm conditions, also known as 'thunderstorm asthma.' First studied as severe epidemic events, recent longitudinal work studied less dramatic but more frequent occurrences. We explore thunderstorm asthma-related emergency department visits in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and evaluated risk differences by sex and age. We define a thunderstorm asthma exposure event as the daily occurrence of 2 or more lightning strikes during high pollen periods, and use daily counts of asthma-related emergency department visits to estimate relative and absolute risk of severe asthma during thunderstorm asthma events for the full population and for sex and age subgroups. The overall population had a 1.06 (95 % CI: 1.02, 1.09) times higher risk of asthma-related ED visits during thunderstorm asthma events compared to days without thunderstorm asthma events. Children under 18 show no higher risk (RR 1.02; 95 % CI: 0.97 1.08), but adults 18-44 years (RR 1.08; 95 % CI: 1.02, 1.13) and 45 and up (RR 1.08; 95 % CI 1.02, 1.15) show higher relative risk. Absolute risk measures show similar patterns to the age and sex results, but age-sex subgroups show more variation in absolute vs relative risk. Our results support an association between ED visits and thunderstorm asthma and provide evidence of varying risks by sex across the life course. These differences in risk have implications for clinical treatment of this allergic type of asthma and for future research into this poorly recognized environmental exposure. Plain Language Summary: Recent research has highlighted the existence of Thunderstorm asthma events, a phenomenon in which pollen grains rupture in the conditions that occur with a thunderstorm, releasing subpollen particles that are capable of triggering severe asthma in susceptible populations. Where severe asthma is a disease that usually impacts children, we find in this study that asthma ED visits associated with thunderstorm asthma events more frequently impact adults, particularly males 18-44 and females 45 and up.

Indexed as

AsthmaLife coursePollenThunderstorm asthma

Identifiers

PMID39391232
PMCPMC11466176

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LicenceCC BY
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.