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. 2025 Feb 7;28(3):111968.
doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.111968. eCollection 2025 Mar 21.

The impact of high humidex on the risk of hospital admissions for urinary system diseases in Lanzhou, China: A time-series analysis

Ke Xu  1 , Qian Li  1 , Yong-Qin Cao  2 , Li Ma  1 , Xu-Song Zhang  1 , Jing-Ze Yu  1 , Miao-Xin Liu  1 , An-Ning Zhu  1 , Tian Tian  1 , Ye Ruan  1
Affiliations

The impact of high humidex on the risk of hospital admissions for urinary system diseases in Lanzhou, China: A time-series analysis

Ke Xu et al. iScience. .

Abstract

There is scant research on the association between humidex exposure and urinary system diseases. Hospitalization records from Lanzhou city were collected for the period 2015 to 2019, alongside daily meteorological and air pollution data for the study duration. Daily humidex was calculated using temperature and relative humidity indices. The study employed a combined approach of generalized additive models and distributed lag non-linear models (DLNMs) to estimate the exposure-lag-response relationship between humidex and hospital admissions for urinary system diseases, as well as for subgroups of diseases (urolithiasis and tubule-interstitial diseases). A total of 55,365 patients with urinary system diseases were included. The single lag effect of overall urinary system diseases was most significant on lag13 with the relative risk (RR) = 1.066 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.011, 1.124), while the cumulative lag effect over lag0-14 was most significant with RR = 1.387 (95% CI: 1.240, 1.550). The goal of this study was to establish an early warning system and allocate medical resources effectively to reduce hospital admissions for urinary system diseases.

Keywords: Climatology; Public health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Time-series distribution of overall and cause-specific hospital admissions for urinary system diseases, humidex, daily average temperature, and relative humidity in Lanzhou from 2015 to 2019 (A–F) The left column presents the temporal trends of meteorological factor levels, including (A) humidex, (B) temperature, and (C) relative humidity. The right column demonstrates the temporal trends of hospital admission cases, specifically (D) urinary system diseases, (E) urolithiasis, and (F) renal tubule-interstitial diseases.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Spearman’s correlation analysis among variables This figure illustrates the correlations among various meteorological factors, among various pollutants, and between meteorological factors and pollutants. See also Table S1.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The exposure-response relationship between humidex and overall and cause-specific hospital admissions for urinary system diseases (A–C) The figure presents the trends in the relative risk (95% CI) of hospitalization for (A) urinary system diseases, (B) urolithiasis, and (C) renal tubule-interstitial diseases, respectively, as the level of humidex varies.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Relative risk (95% CI) of overall and cause-specific urinary system disease hospital admissions associated with humidex (99th percentile) along different lag structures (A–C) The figure demonstrates the trends in the relative risk (95% CI) of hospitalization for (A) urinary system diseases, (B) urolithiasis, and (C) renal tubule-interstitial diseases, as the single lag days and cumulative lag days (from the day of exposure to the 14th day post exposure) increase, respectively. See also Figure S1; Table S2.
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