Association between ambient temperature, PM_2.5 and tuberculosis in Northwest China

ABSTRACT

   Existing evidence suggested that the risk of tuberculosis (TB) infection was associated to the variations in temperature and PM_2.5. A total of 9,111 cases of TB were reported in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China from 2013 to 2015 on a daily basis, and 57.2% of them were male. The TB risk was more prominent for a lower temperature in males (RR of 1.724, 95% CI: 1.241, 2.394), the aged over 64 years (RR of 2.241, 95% CI: 1.554, 3.231), and the high mobility occupation subpopulation (RR of 2.758, 95% CI: 1.745, 4.359). High concentration of PM_2.5 showed a short-term effect and was only associated with an increased risk in the early stages of exposure for the female, and aged 36–64 years group. There were 15.06% (1370 cases) of cases of TB may be attributable to the temperature, and 2.94% (268 cases) may be attributable to the increase of PM_2.5 exposures. Low temperatures may be associated with significantly increase in the risk of TB, and high PM_2.5 concentrations have a short-term association on increasing the risk of TB. Strengthening the monitoring and regular prevention and control of high risk groups will provide scientific guidance to reduce the incidence of TB.

KEYWORDS:

• Tuberculosis
• meteorological factors
• PM_2.5
• case-crossover design
• distributed lag non-linear model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2299236

Availability of data and materials

Data may be made available by contacting the first author or corresponding author.

Authors’ contributions

Fan Ding, Xianglong Liu: Formal analysis, Writing original draft.

Weicheng Liu: Formal analysis, Writing original draft.

Zengyun Hu: Methodology, Writing-review & editing.

Yi Zhao: Data acquisition, Writing-review & editing.

Yajuan Zhang: Methodology, Writing-review & editing.

Shi Zhao: Methodology, Writing-review & editing.

Yu Zhao: Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.

All authors contributed to writing, reviewing or revising the paper and read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12061058), Western Light Talent Training Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XAB2022YW20), Natural Science Foundation of Ningxia (2023AAC02033) and Key Research and Development Plan Project of Ningxia (2021BEG02026).