Extreme Weather Tied to Autoimmune Disease Flare-ups

Extreme weather events such as heatwaves, storms, wildfires or significant freezes that cause conditions like floods, power outages and air pollution caused an autoimmune disease flare in 12% of patients within 90 days of the event, according to research poster highlights presented by the Autoimmune Association at the National Health Council’s Science of Patient Engagement Symposium: Medicine, MedTech, and AI, held last month in Washington, D.C. The most common reason for a flare-up was the loss of refrigerated medication caused by power outages, reported by 3% of participants.

A team of researchers led by Iazsmin Bauer Ventura, M.D., a rheumatologist and assistant professor of medicine at UChicago Medicine, conducted the online survey of 155 respondents to study the incidence of autoimmune disease flares from July 2022 to the present and whether flares occurred within the last 90 days of a severe weather event. The second generation of the survey in Spanish is now gathering data that will build upon current data.

“We are seeing, particularly in the last 30 years, a very abrupt increase in the number of patients being diagnosed with autoimmune diseases,” Ventura said in a video interview. “We have also found in the bloodwork signs of autoimmunity—antibodies that the immune system is not supposed to be producing.”

A changing climate contributes to increased temperatures, more ultraviolet radiation exposure and decreases in water and food supply, which increases frequency and flares in autoimmune disease patients, according to Frederick W. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., an NIH Scientist Emeritus, who also spoke in the video.

Possible reasons for this link between flare-ups and extreme weather include stress, increased air particulate matter, gut biome disruption and medication shortage, according to the poster.

To increase weather awareness for patients, the poster researchers suggest the Weather Aware Health Companion (WAHC), a conceptual AI tool that would track real-time environmental data and patient metrics. The WAHC would provide patient alerts, increase patient communication with providers and be a source of data for future research, Ventura and her colleagues write in the poster.

Read the slideshow to view all poster highlights.