Daylight robbery: Hospitals admissions for childhood asthma in English regions are inversely associated with hours of sunshine

Carroll, Will; Saunders, Amelia; Ismail, Khaled; Farrell, William; Emes, Richard; Fryer, Anthony

Abstract

Background: Vitamin D is implicated in the expression of childhood asthma but it is difficult to pick apart cause and effect from observational data. If lack of vitamin D is secondary to a sedentary lifestyle then weather patterns should not effect asthma severity.

Aims: To examine long-term meteorological data for English regions, matching this with patterns of hospital use.

Methods: We interrogated two public databases to determine hours of sunlight (www.metoffice.gov.uk) and age and gender corrected hospital admission rates for children with asthma (www.hscic.gov.uk/hes) in English regions. The relationship between asthma hospitalisations, hours of sunshine and deprivation indices were examined using linear regression using STATA v 10.0.

Results: Data were available for 9 consecutive years between 2002 and 2011. There was a strong inverse correlation between hours of sunshine and asthma hospitalisations in children. This relationship was highly statistically significant (p<0.001) and this effect was undiminished following correction for deprivation index.

Conclusions: The strong relationship between annual hours of sunshine and hospital admission for asthma in children adds weight to observational data that vitamin D is a determinant of asthma severity. It is likely that good diet and outdoor activities can reduce the burden of asthma for children and intervention studies are required.

Citation

Carroll, W., Saunders, A., Ismail, K., Farrell, W., Emes, R., & Fryer, A. (2014, September). Daylight robbery: Hospitals admissions for childhood asthma in English regions are inversely associated with hours of sunshine. Presented at 22nd Annual Congress, Munich, Germany

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: 22nd Annual Congress
• Conference Location: Munich, Germany
• Start Date: Sep 6, 2014
• End Date: Sep 10, 2014
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Publisher URL: https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/438