Understanding The Role of Perceived Temperature In Modulating Stroke Risk

Stroke remains a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. However, clas-sical risk factors, such as diabetes and hypertension, cannot fully explain stroke incidence and outcomes. Otherwise, emerging studies have highlighted the im-portance of environmental factors as non-classical risk factors for stroke. In this study, our aim was to investigate the effect of perceived temperature on stroke in-cidence. To this end, we conducted a case-crossover analysis between 2018 and 2022, including 1712 stroke events. Stroke risk was assessed by estimating odds ratios using a distributed lag non-linear model integrated into a conditional lo-gistic regression framework, along with 95% confidence intervals. The model was adjusted for rainfall and air pollutants, and lagged effects from 0 to 7 days were considered. The results showed that prolonged exposure to high perceived temperature over several consecutive days may be a risk factor for stroke. While daily maximum perceived temperature was not associated with stroke risk, higher daily mean and minimum perceived temperatures were associated with an in-creased risk. In addition, smaller changes in daily perceived temperature range, as well as smaller day-to-day increases and decreases in perceived temperature, were associated with a higher risk of stroke. These findings contribute to a better un-derstanding of the impact of environmental factors on stroke risk and may ulti-mately help to inform the development and implementation of policies aimed at preventing and mitigating stroke.