The Association of Temperature Variability With Blood Pressure in Southern China: a Series of Cross-sectional Studies in Guangdong Province, China

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have found a positive relationship between temperature variability and mortality, but few studies regarding the effects of temperature variability on blood pressure (BP) are available.Objective: To investigate the effects of temperature variability on BP in Guangdong province, southern China.Methods: Data on Meteorology and BP in Guangdong Province from 2004 to 2015 were collected from Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 38088 participants aged 18 years and over. The generalized additive model (GAM) was used to estimate the relationship between temperature variability and BP after adjusting for confounding variables.Result: Our study found that there was a significant positively correlation between temperature variability and systolic blood pressure (SBP), and the estimate increase with the increment of exposure days in total population. The highest estimate was found at 7 days lag with increased 0.497 mmHg of SBP (95%CI: 0.335–0.660) for a 1 °C increase of TV0-7. There was insignificant association between temperature variability and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). The effects of temperature variability on BP among subpopulations with different hypertension statuses were various, and the estimates of Temperature variability with different exposure days on SBP were all higher in known hypertensives than that in normotensives.Conclusion: There was a significant association between temperature variability and SBP in Guangdong province with various effects for different populations. Our findings provide evidence that temperature variability is an independent risk factor for SBP changes, and temperature variability should be considered in hypertension clinic management and epidemiological survey.