Asthma incidence can be influenced by climate change in Italy: findings from the GEIRD study—a climatological and epidemiological assessment

An association between climatic conditions and asthma incidence has been widely assumed. However, it is unclear whether climatic variations have a fingerprint on asthma dynamics over long time intervals. The aim of this study is to detect a possible correlation of the Summer North Atlantic Oscillation (S-NAO) index and the self-calibrated palmer drought severity index (scPDSI) with asthma incidence over the period from 1957 to 2006 in Italy. To this aim, an analysis of non-stationary and non-linear signals was performed on the time series of the Italian databases on respiratory health (ISAYA and GEIRD) including 36,255 individuals overall, S-NAO, and scPDSI indices to search for characteristic periodicities. The ISAYA (Italian Study on Asthma in Young Adults) and GEIRD (Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases) studies collected information on respiratory health in general population samples, born between 1925 and 1989 and aged 20-84 years at the time of the interview, from 13 Italian centres. We found that annual asthma total incidence shared the same periodicity throughout the 1957-2006 time interval. Asthma incidence turned out to be correlated with the dynamics of the scPDSI, modulated by the S-NAO, sharing the same averaged 6 year-periodicity. Since climate patterns appear to influence asthma incidence, future studies aimed at elucidating the complex relationships between climate and asthma incidence are warranted.