Temporal dynamic effects of meteorological factors and air quality on the physical health of the older adults in Shenzhen, China

Front Public Health. 2024 Mar 6:12:1289253. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1289253. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Introduction: Meteorological and environmental factors can affect people's lives and health, which is crucial among the older adults. However, it is currently unclear how they specifically affect the physical condition of older adults people.

Methods: We collected and analyzed the basic physical examination indicators of 41 older adults people for two consecutive years (2021 and 2022), and correlated them with meteorological and environmental factors. Partial correlation was also conducted to exclude unrelated factors as well.

Results: We found that among the physical examination indicators of the older adults for two consecutive years, five indicators (HB, WBC, HbAlc, CB, LDL-C) showed significant differences across the population, and they had significantly different dynamic correlation patterns with six meteorological (air pressure, temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and sunshine duration) and seven air quality factors (NO2, SO2, PM10, O3-1h, O3-8h, CO, PM2.5).

Discussion: Our study has discovered for the first time the dynamic correlation between indicators in normal basic physical examinations and meteorological factors and air quality indicators, which will provide guidance for the future development of policies that care for the healthy life of the older adults.

Keywords: Shenzhen; climate; physical examination; pollution; public health.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Air Pollutants* / analysis
  • Air Pollution*
  • China
  • Humans
  • Meteorological Concepts
  • Temperature

Substances

  • Air Pollutants

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded by the National Science Foundation of China (81773395), the Sanming Project of Medicine in Shenzhen (SZSM202011008), the Science and Technology Plan of Shenzhen (JCYJ20190807103409848), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022 M723299, 2023 T160666).