ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1621856
Effects of Meteorological Factors on Outpatient Visits for Chronic Rhinosinusitis in Wuhan, China (2018-2019): A Time-Series Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Nursing, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of, WuHan, China
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Background: Studies examining associations between meteorological factors and outpatient visits for chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) are limited. This study aimed to investigate the effects of daily mean temperature, relative humidity (RH) and precipitation on outpatient visits for CRS.: Electronic records of CRS outpatient visits were collected from Tongji hospital in Wuhan, China from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019. Daily meteorological data were obtained from the Wuhan Meteorological Bureau during the same period. A generalized additive negative binomial regression model combined with a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) was employed to analyze the lag-exposure-response relationship between meteorological factors and the number of CRS outpatient visits. Stratified analyses were conducted to identify potential effect modifications by age and season.Results: A total of 14259 CRS outpatient visits were recorded. Relative humidity and precipitation showed no significant association with daily CRS visits, whereas low temperatures significantly elevated CRS outpatient visits. Specifically, extreme temperature (-1.8°C, 1st percentile) was found to be associated with 1.946 (95% CI 1.273-2.973) times the risk of outpatient visits due to CRS, compared to the reference value of 32.9°C. Furthermore, the number of outpatient visits for childhood and younger individuals with CRS showed a negative correlation with temperatures, whereas middle-aged individuals and elderly individuals showed no such correlation.This study suggests that meteorological phenomena may have detrimental effects on health, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the environmental risk factors associated with this disease.
Keywords: Chronic rhinitis, Meterological factors, Time series analsis, China, Outpatient visits
Received: 08 May 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guan, Xiang, Huang, Zhou and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Min Zhou, Department of Nursing, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Ming Zeng, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of, WuHan, China
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