부산대학교 도서관

Reports of short duration studies have been made on the influence of thunderstorms on asthma. In order to evaluate the impact of such weather phenomena over longer time periods in temperate climates the authors compared the daily number of emergency room attendances by people aged 15 to 44 for asthma attacks in Athens' largest chest diseases hospital on 74 thunderstorm and matching control days (91 and 107 attendances respectively) during an eight year period. No statistically significant difference was noted between the studied pairs of days, using the Kruskall-Wallis test. This study showed no actual influence of thunderstorms on asthma attacks. Since daily pollen counts are not available for the city the authors believe that further research into other environmental factors is needed in order to better evaluate the effects of the environment on the exacerbations of bronchial asthma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]