Background: The seasonality of varicella and herpes zoster has been widely observed, but there is limited evidence on their associations with ambient temperature.
Objective: The associations between ambient temperature and outpatient visits for varicella and herpes zoster were examined.
Methods: We collected daily outpatient visit data for varicella (N = 3520) and herpes zoster (N = 6614) from a major hospital in Shanghai, China, from 2008 to 2010. We adopted the generalized additive model in time-series analysis to investigate the short-term associations between temperature and outpatient visits for varicella and herpes zoster after controlling for seasonal trends, day of the week, and humidity.
Results: A 1°C increase in daily mean temperature was associated with a 1.33% (95% confidence interval 0.93%-1.74%) decrease in outpatient visits for varicella whereas it was associated with a 2.18% (95% confidence interval 1.90%-2.46%) increase in outpatient visits for herpes zoster.
Limitations: Only 1 hospital was included and we did not control for individual-level risk factors.
Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that temperature variation might be an important risk factor for varicella and herpes zoster in China.
Keywords: herpes zoster; outpatient visits; risk factor; temperature; varicella.
Copyright © 2015 American Academy of Dermatology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.