ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1677522
Effect of Climate Change, Extreme Temperatures (Heat and Cold) on Diabetes Mellitus Risk, Hospitalization, and Mortality: Global Evidenced Based Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 2University of Aberdeen School of Medicine Medical Sciences and Nutrition, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
- 3University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
- 4Mills-Peninsula Health Services, Burlingame, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Climate change and diabetes mellitus are challenging threats to humanity in the 21st century. Climate change enhances the occurrence and severity of extreme temperature events, heat and cold, which can lead to severe health consequences. This study aimed to investigate the effects of extreme temperatures, including heat and cold, on the risk of developing diabetes mellitus, requiring hospitalizations or emergency department (ED) visits, and deaths. Methods: In this study, 116 documents were initially identified from "databases, including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar". Articles on extreme temperatures, heat, cold, and diabetes mellitus were searched using the keywords: climate change, extreme temperatures, heat, cold, and diabetes mellitus. The descriptive information was recorded from the identified studies. Eventually, 13 documents were included in the analysis and synthesis. The association between extreme temperatures, including heat and cold, and diabetes-related outcomes, such as diabetes risk, hospitalizations, ED visits, and mortality was established. 2 Results: Exposure to extreme temperatures (heat and cold) were positively and significantly related with an increased risk of adverse diabetes-related events, with a combined risk ratio (RR) of 1.14 (95% CI: 1.08–1.21, p=0.01); diabetes-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits (RR of 1.10 (95% CI: 1.01–1.19, p= 0.03); and increased diabetes-linked mortality (RR 1.16 (95% CI: 1.07–1.25, p=0.01). Conclusions: Extreme temperatures (heat and cold) significantly increased adverse diabetes-related events, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and diabetes-related mortality. Reducing the risk of climate change and extreme temperatures requires coordinated efforts at individual, community, national and global levels to combat climate change and diabetes mellitus.
Keywords: Climate Change, Extreme temperatures, heat, cold, Diabetes Mellitus
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meo, Shaikh, Abukhalaf, Meo and Klonoff. 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: Sultan Meo, sultanmeo@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.