“Cold weather leads to more heart attacks, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2013 today by professor Marc Claeys from Belgium. The multifactorial study of nearly 16,000 patients found no relationship between heart attacks and air pollution.”

“AMI counts were correlated with average weekly meteorological data obtained from daily measurements in 73 meteorological sites, equally distributed in Belgium. The following meteorological measures were investigated: air pollution expressed as particulate matter both less than 10µM (PM10) and less than 2.5µM (PM2.5), black smoke, temperature and relative humidity.”

“Multivariate analysis showed that only temperature was significantly correlated with AMI, which increased by 7% for each 10°C decrease in minimal temperature (odds ratio [OR]=1.07, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.04-1.11), and that there was no significant effect of air pollution (OR=1.01, 95%CI=1.00-1.02).”

 

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-09-cold-weather-heart.html

 

(h/t Tom Nelson)