Effects of climatic temperature stress on cardiovascular diseases

The climatic stress was anticipated to increase direct and indirect risks to human health via different pathways and mechanisms. Extremely high air temperature might trigger the onset of cardiovascular events in the vulnerable. Cold-related mortality was much less understood than heat-related one, and was considered another climatic example of the effects on the human health. Increases in mortality with cardiovascular diseases in extreme heat and cold weather had been studied in many regions. These results suggested that people died rapidly from climate-change related cardiovascular diseases before they were sent to hospital. Obviously, these findings reminded us that climatic stress can be considered as a new potential risk factor of sudden cardiovascular events in human health, and there was an urgent need for large-scale, prospective, community-based and international study of sudden cardiovascular events to explore deeply the risk factors to schedule preventive strategies. (C) 2010 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.