Tim Bruckner - Univ California, Irvine

Ambient Temperature During Gestation and Cold-related Adult Mortality in a Swedish Cohort, 1915-2002

    Date:  02/21/2013 (Thu)

    Time:  3:30pm- 5:00pm

    Location:  Seminar will be held on-site: Social Sciences 111

    Organizer:  Amar Hamoudi


Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.

    All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.

   *** - All meetings (unless otherwise noted) will be in 202 Soc-Sci - ***

   10:00am - Amar Hamoudi

   10:30am - Duncan Thomas

   11:00am - Ryan Brown

   11:30am - Candice Odgers

   12:00pm - Lunch (Liz Ananat)

    1:00pm - Meet w/ DuPRI Students: Nick Ingwersen

    1:45pm - OPEN

    2:15pm - Elizabeth Frankenberg

    2:45pm - Giovanna Merli

    3:15pm - Seminar Prep (111 Soc-Sci)

    3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (111 Soc-Sci, 3:30pm to 5:00pm)

   5:15pm - Seth Sanders

   6:30pm - Dinner: Amar Hamoudi, Jenny Tung, Sidra Goldman-Mellor, Sandra Albrecht


    Additional Comments:  ABSTRACT: For all climatic regions, mortality due to cold exceeds mortality due to heat. A separate line of research indicates that lifespan after age 50 depends on month of birth. This research as well as literature documenting developmental plasticity and culling in utero implies the hypothesis that ambient temperature during gestation may influence cold-related adult mortality. We use data on over 13,500 Swedes to test whether subjects whose mothers experienced unusually benign ambient temperatures during their gestation exhibit an elevated risk of cold-related mortality in adulthood. We linked instrument-based, daily temperatures to subjects beginning at their estimated date of conception and ending at death or the end of follow-up. We specified a counting process Cox proportional hazards model to analyze the two leading causes of cold-related death in adulthood: ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke. We find an increased risk of IHD death during cold spells among adults whose mothers experienced relatively warm ambient temperature during pregnancy. We, however, observe no relation for stroke mortality. The IHD findings indicate that ambient temperature during gestation—independent of birth month—modifies the relation between cold and adult mortality.