The Relationship between Climate Change and Rheumatic Disease: A Review
Abstract
Background: Climate change has increased wildfires, air pollution, elevations in heat, and extreme weather events. While some negative effects on health are obvious, for example, on pulmonary health, climate change's impact on rheumatic disease and autoimmune health may be less visible.
Summary: Multiple studies suggest that increased environmental heat is associated with gout flares and with hospitalizations for gout, likely worsens cardiovascular disease and increases biomarkers associated with inflammatory conditions. Increasing air pollution, including through smoke generated by wildfires or wildland urban interface fires, includes a mix of particulate matter and gases which can engender inflammation through oxidative stress. Studies discussed in the current paper suggest that smoke exposure may be associated with incident rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus and with elevations in biomarkers associated with these and other diseases.
Key message: Understanding some of the potential health effects of exposure to wildfires and elevating heat, specifically increases in incidence of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, disease activity, hospitalization risk, and disease biomarkers is important for clinicians, and represents an opportunity to educate their patients in the clinical setting and monitor them for health effects of climate change manifestations.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Climate Change Impacts on Marine Ecosystems
- Assisted Gene Flow to Facilitate Local Adaptation to Climate Change
- Climate Change Effects on Plant Disease: Genomes to Ecosystems
- Biodiversity and Climate Change: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecological Responses of Species and Communities
- A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change
- Global Monsoon Dynamics and Climate Change
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.