Changing weather conditions have caused a gradual rise in the surface temperature of the earth. 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history.
Nervous system conditions such as stroke, neurological infections and some mental health conditions can be aggravated by climate change, researchers have reported in The Lancet Neurology. They have called for robust studies for the protection of people living with these conditions.
Neurological disorders are the leading causes of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) – which are a measure of disease burden that takes into account the loss of productive years because of death or disability – are the second leading cause of death globally. “Neurological diseases, and their treatments, can undermine all aspects of thermoregulation: for example, they can compromise adaptation to long-term rising temperatures and acute temperature elevations (eg, in heatwaves). Conversely, disease pathophysiology can itself be aggravated by normal thermoregulatory responses. For most diseases, the underlying mechanisms have not yet been well studied, but there are plausible links between climate change-related drivers (eg, higher temperatures) and consequent generation or disruption of pathophysiology, based on current understanding of how heat affects the human body,” the researchers wrote.
Climate change has not only caused erratic weather conditions – more frequent cyclones in some parts and unprecedented rainfall (such as the showers in the United Arab Emirates recently) in others – but it has also caused a gradual rise in the surface temperature of the earth. 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. That psychiatric illnesses have a seasonal variation in presentation have been long known and with the character of seasons now changing the effect is inevitable.
Among the other diseases that the researchers have identified and the changes in which they have quantified are Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias, migraine and tension type headaches, encephalitis, meningitis and epilepsy. “Approximately 60 million people have epilepsy. Most epilepsies share features likely to be aggravated by climate change, such as a sensitivity to sleep deprivation as a precipitant for seizures as sleep is, and will be, compromised by climate change, especially heatwaves,” they wrote.
While listing limitations of the study, the researchers wrote about the paucity of data. One particularly compelling example they used was that while the vulnerability of children to climate change is well established there is lack of data on the effect of climate change on pediatric neurological and psychiatric illnesses.
