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

Frédéric Blavier, Kurt Barbe, Gilles Faron, Sébastien Doutreloup, Malik Boukerrou, Florent Fuchs, Leonardo Gucciardo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6663-6669
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine
Volume35
Issue number25
Early online date2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Heat waves
  • global warming
  • hypertensive disease
  • prematurity

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