Analysis of the Relationship Between Blood Pressure and Weather Measures in 52,558 Taiwan Residents

• Activity Number: 76 - Contributed Poster Presentations: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 3, 2020 : 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Chien-Hsiun Chen and HOU-REN CHEN* and Chih-Chieh Wu and Yi-Shan Tung and Pui-Yan Kwok
• Companies: IBMS, Academia Sinica and Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School and National Cheng Kung University and Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School and IBMS, Academia Sinica
• Keywords: blood pressure; temperature; weather effect; multiple linear regression

Abstract

Our aims is to assess effects of weather on blood pressure. Single-visit blood pressures along with survey data of 52,558 subjects (18,710 males, 33,848 females), living in 6 major cities in Taiwan, were extracted from Taiwan Biobank. Average weather measures on the visit day, including air pressure (AP), temperature, and relative humidity (RH), were retrospectively obtained from the nearest weather station to the subject’s resident township, through Taiwan Central Weather Bureau web-database. Temperature was divided into 3 levels: low (< 18°C), mid (18~28°C) and high (>28°C). Our multiple linear regression analysis showed systolic blood pressure (SBP) was significantly associated with age, gender and BMI (p< 0.001) but not associated with AP and RH in all multiple linear regression models. However, low temperature and SBP were significantly inversely associated in males (p = 0.006) but not in females; high temperature groups showed no significant associations. This might suggest that the response of the cardiovascular system to the cold weather differs between males and females.