Ambient Temperature and Outpatient Visits for Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Bronchitis in Shanghai: A Time Series Analysis

The association between ambient temperature and acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis （AECB） was still unknown. Therefore, we performed an epidemiological study in a large hospital of Shanghai to explore the relationship about temperature and outpatient visit for AECB. We adopted a quasi-Poisson generalized additive models and distributed lag nonlinear models to estimate the accumulative effects of temperature on AECB across multiple days. We found significant non-linear effects of cold temperature on hospital visits for AECB, and the potential effect of cold temperature might last more than 2 weeks. The relative risks of extreme cold （first percentiles of temperature throughout the study period） and cold （10th percentile of temperature） temperature over lags 0-14 d were 2.98 [95% confidence intervals （CI）： 1.77, 5.04] and 1.63 （95% Ch 1.21, 2.19）, compared with the 25th percentile of temperature. However, we found no positive association between hospital visits and hot weather. This study showed that exposure to both extreme cold and cold temperatures were associated with increased outpatient visits for AECB in a large hospital of Shanghai.

TCM aerosol inhalation treatment in acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis： a meta-analysis

Objectives： To determine whether traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） aerosol inhalation treatment is effective inthe treatment of acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis. Methods： Search double-blind randomised clinical trials（RCT） about the use of TCM aerosol inhalation in patient with acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis via database including Chinese biomedicine literature database, Wanfang Data, CNKI, Pubmed, EMBASE and CochraneLibrary from the beginning to October 2016. Quality evaluation, data extraction and data analysis of these RCT wascarried out with reference to the Cochrane systematic review. Results： 16 studies with 738 patients in TCM aerosolinhalation group and 675 in control group were included. The results of meta-analysis showed, （1） TCM aerosolinhalation group could improve the total cure rate. （2） TCM aerosol inhalation could increase the expression of IL-2while decrease the expression of IL-8 and MDA in sputum and blood. （3） TCM aerosol inhalation could improvethe symptoms of cough, cough with sputum, cough with dyspnea and lung wet rales. It also improve the symptomsof cough, expectorate and lung wet rales. （4） Shorten the time of cough and lung rale. （5） The adverse reactionswere light only with 1 occurrence of nausea and vomiting. Conclusions： The use of TCM aerosol inhalation in thetreatment of acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis was effective. However, the inclusion researches quality werenot very high, which only provided limited evidence for clinical application. Higher-quality randomized controlledtrials were needed for further study.