The Association between Meteorological Factors and the Prevalence of Acute-on-chronic Liver Failure:A Population-based Study,2007-2016

Background and Aims:The aim of this study was to inves-tigate the effect(s)of meteorological factors on the preva-lence of acute-on-chronic liver failure(ACLF)based on 10-years'worth of population data.Methods:We retrospec-tively collected ACLF case data from January 2007 to Decem-ber 2016 from three major hospitals in Fuzhou City,China.Climatic data,including rainfall,mean temperature,differen-ces in temperature(delta temperature)and mean humidity for each month were downloaded from the China Climatic Data Service Center.Following data collection,Poisson regression analysis was used to estimate the effect(s)of climatic factors on the risk of the prevalence of ACLF.Results:The population consisted of a total of 3510 cases,with a mean age of 44.7±14.8 years-old and with 79.8%being male.Upon analyzing the population data,we found a growing trend and seasonal pattern of monthly counts of ACLF-related hospitalization throughout the past decade.Specifically,the primary peak of ACLF prevalence was in January and the secondary peak was in July.Poisson regression showed mean temperature(risk ratio=0.991,95%CI=0.986–0.996)and mean humidity(risk ra-tio=1.011,95%CI=1.006–1.017)to be independently cor-related with the monthly cases of ACLF.The results suggest that every unit increase of mean temperature(1°C)and mean humidity(1%)are associated with 0.991-and 1.011-fold changes of ACLF cases,respectively.Rainfall and delta temper-ature did not appear to affect the prevalence of this disease.Conclusions:The hospitalization for ACLF peaks in January and July.Low temperature and high humidity appear to func-tion as factors contributing to this seasonal pattern.