Reports from National Cheng Kung University Highlight Recent Research in Stroke (Dynamic Changes and Temporal Association with Ambient Temperatures: Nonlinear Analyses of Stroke Events from a National Health Insurance Database): Cerebrovascular Diseases and Conditions – Stroke

2021 DEC 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Information Technology Business Daily -- Data detailed on stroke have been presented. According to news originating from Tainan, Taiwan, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “The associations between ambient temperatures and stroke are still uncertain, although they have been widely studied. Furthermore, the impact of latitudes or climate zones on these associations is still controversial.”

Financial supporters for this research include Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan; Hualien Tzu Chi General Hospital, Hualien, Taiwan.

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from National Cheng Kung University: “The Tropic of Cancer passes through the middle of Taiwan and divides it into subtropical and tropical areas. Therefore, the Taiwan National Health Insurance Database can be used to study the influence of latitudes on the association between ambient temperature and stroke events. In this study, we retrieved daily stroke events from 2010 to 2015 in the New Taipei and Taipei Cities (the subtropical areas) and Kaohsiung City (the tropical area) from the National Health Insurance Research Database. Overall, 70,338 and 125,163 stroke events, including ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage, in Kaohsiung City and the Taipei Area were retrieved from the database, respectively. We also collected daily mean temperatures from the Taipei and Kaohsiung weather stations during the same period. The data were decomposed by ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). There were consistent 6-period IMFs with intervals around 360 days in most decomposed data. Spearman’s rank correlation test showed moderate-to-strong correlations between the relevant IMFs of daily temperatures and events of stroke in both areas, which were higher in the northern area compared with those in the southern area.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “EEMD is a useful tool to demonstrate the regularity of stroke events and their associations with dynamic changes of the ambient temperature. Our results clearly demonstrate the temporal association between the ambient temperature and daily events of ischemic stroke and intracranial hemorrhage. It will contribute to planning a healthcare system for stroke seasonally. Further well-designed prospective studies are needed to elucidate the meaning of these associations.”

For more information on this research see: Dynamic Changes and Temporal Association with Ambient Temperatures: Nonlinear Analyses of Stroke Events from a National Health Insurance Database. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2021,10(5041):5041. (Journal of Clinical Medicine - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm). The publisher for Journal of Clinical Medicine is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10215041.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Che-Wei Lin, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701401, Taiwan. Additional authors for this research include Po-Wei Chen, Wei-Min Liu, Jin-Yi Hsu, Yu-Lun Huang, Yu Cheng, An-Bang Liu.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)