SEASONALITY OF PNEUMONIA ADMISSIONS AND ITSASSOCIATION WITH CLIMATE: AN EIGHT-YEAR NATIONWIDEPOPULATION-BASED STUDY

摘要

The aim of the study was to examine seasonal variability in monthly admissions forcommunity-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in Taiwan. Our study sample comprised477,541 pneumonia patients in Taiwan between 1998 and 2005, inclusive. Resultsshowed a fairly consistent seasonal pattern of pneumonia admissions, regardless of sexand age, and for the groups combined. Seasonal trends showed a peak in hospitaliz-ations from January through April, followed by a sharp decrease in May and a troughfrom August through October. The auto-regressive integrated moving average(ARIMA) test found significant seasonality for all age and sex groups and for the wholesample (all p < 0.001). After adjusting for seasonality, month, and trends, the ARIMAregression models revealed that the monthly pneumonia admissions rate was signifi-cantly associated with ambient temperature, for the total sample, for female groups,and for the 65-74 and 75 age groups (all p < 0.01). A 1°C decrease in ambient temp-erature was associated with roughly a 0.03 increase in monthly pneumonia admissionsrate (per 10,000 people) for the entire sample. We conclude the monthly pneumoniaadmissions rate was significantly associated with seasonality, and was higher in periodswith low ambient temperatures.