Premium
METEOROLOGICAL FACTORS AND ECLAMPSIA
Author(s) -
Neutra Raymond
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
bjog: an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.157
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1471-0528
pISSN - 1470-0328
DOI - 10.1111/j.1471-0528.1974.tb00393.x
Subject(s) - eclampsia , relative humidity , humidity , maximum temperature , medicine , demography , environmental science , geography , pregnancy , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , biology , physics , genetics , sociology
Summary A review of the literature relating weather variables to eclampsia suggests that to date the conclusions drawn have been severely compromised by methodological defects in study design and data analysis. The present study was carried out in Cali, Colombia, a city with only one public maternity hospital. Data on 156 eclamptic women and 465 control women were linked by computer to data on rain, temperature and relative humidity on the day of admission and on that day plus the previous two. The data show that eclampsia is related to maximum temperature and relative humidity during the five‐year interval studied. Eclampsia rates are twice as high on cool or humid days than on days with average temperatures or humidities. This relationship persists even when one controls for seasonal fluctuations in number of births or in the proportion of parturients who were primiparae, very young, or unmarried.