Effect of air temperature on human births, preterm births and births associated with maternal hypertension

Abstract

Objective

We studied potential effects of outdoor air temperatures or barometric pressure on births, preterm births and births associated with maternal hypertension.

Methods

12,269 births were retrospectively reviewed in Brussel and 25,880 in South Reunion Island. National Belgium and French weather reference centers provided outdoor air temperatures and barometric pressures from the nearest weather stations on the corresponding birthdays. Poisson regression models were used to assess if outdoor air temperatures or barometric pressure could be correlated, immediately and several days later, with the number of daily births, preterm births and births associated with hypertension.

Results

Outdoor air temperature was significantly correlated to the number of daily births in Brussels. For each additional degree Celsius, overall births increased by 0.4% during the same day. Four days later, overall births increased by 1.8%, preterm births by 2.6% and births associated with hypertension by 5.7%. Similar observations on numbers of daily births were reported in South Reunion Island, without reaching statistical significance (p = .08).

Conclusion

As previously demonstrated in recent studies, increased air temperature leads progressively to higher rates of births and preterm births. An even stronger delayed effect of air temperature was observed on births associated with hypertension. This would be worth further investigating.

Keywords:

• Heat waves
• global warming
• hypertensive disease
• prematurity

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Belgium “Institut Royal de Météorologie (IRM)” and the French weather forecast "Météo France" for the database of daily barometric pressures (min, max and median) and daily atmospheric temperatures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).