Irish Times: Climate and heart attacks

As the Irish Times reports:

Winnipeg in Canada is one of the coldest large cities in the world and is an ideal place to study the effect of temperature on cardiac events. Which is what Dr James Tan [department of surgery] and colleagues of the University of Manitoba did in a look-back study of some 1,800 patients who had been admitted to hospital with a heart attack.

They found that with every drop of 10 degrees Celsius in the daily high temperature mark, the risk of heart attack increased by 7 per cent, with the risk predictable up to two days before the actual heart attack.

The finding is probably due to the increased viscosity and greater coagulability of blood in colder weather.

But as Crowded House remind us in the chorus of their hit song –“Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you” – there is not a lot we can do about weather as a cardiac risk factor.