研究表明，雷暴会引发哮喘，需要住院治疗

研究表明，雷暴会引发哮喘，需要住院治疗

The calm before the storm isn't really so calm, at least not for anyone with asthma or other severe breathing disorders, new research shows.

新的研究表明，暴风雨前的平静并不是真的那么平静，至少对患有哮喘或其他严重呼吸障碍的人来说不是这样。

During the days before a major thunderstorm hits, emergency room visits for seniors who suffer from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) rose significantly, according to a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

周一发表在《美国医学会杂志内科学》上的一份研究报告称，在大雷暴袭击前几天，患哮喘和慢性阻塞性肺病(COPD)的老年人急诊室就诊人数显著增加。

Although the study used Medicare data for those 65 years and older, the danger is just as real for younger people with severe respiratory illnesses, said study author Dr. Anupam Jena, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

哈佛医学院卫生保健政策副教授、研究作者阿努帕姆·杰纳博士说，尽管这项研究使用了65岁以上老年人的医疗保险数据，但对于患有严重呼吸道疾病的年轻人来说，这种危险也是真实存在的。

"It could certainly impact children and younger adults with asthma," Jena said. "We just needed to have the specific data Medicare provides so we could compare hospitalization rates with weather patterns in small areas."

杰纳说:“这肯定会影响到患有哮喘的儿童和年轻人。”“我们只需要有医疗保险提供的具体数据，这样我们就可以比较小地区的住院率和天气模式。”

The study found the emergency visits peaked the day before the storm, with a mean 1.8 additional visits per million beneficiaries.

研究发现，在风暴发生的前一天，急救访问达到峰值，平均每百万人增加1.8次访问。

"And after the storm is over, we saw the rates of visits to the ER went down." Jena said.

杰纳说:“风暴过后，我们看到急诊室的访问量下降了。”

Thunderstorm asthma

雷暴（引发的）哮喘

The phenomenon of "thunderstorm asthma" was first recorded in Birmingham, England in 1983 and in Melbourne, Australia in 1987, where widespread waves of asthma attacks appeared to be connected to violent thunderstorms during high pollen counts.

“雷暴哮喘”现象最早于1983年在英格兰伯明翰和1987年在澳大利亚墨尔本被记录下来。在墨尔本，广泛的哮喘发作似乎与花粉含量高时的猛烈雷暴有关。

It happened again in Melbourne in 2016, killing eight people and sending some 8,000 to the emergency room.

2016年，墨尔本再次发生类似事件，造成8人死亡，约8000人被送往急诊室。

No one understood why this might happen since rain typically washes pollen out of the air. In addition, the size of the rye pollen spores in the Melbourne area were too large to be easily inhaled and typically lodged in the sinuses before they could reach the lungs.

没有人知道为什么会发生这种情况，因为雨水通常会冲走空气中的花粉。此外，墨尔本地区的黑麦花粉孢子体积太大，不容易被吸入，通常在到达肺部之前就停留在鼻窦里。

So why would a rare storm with that type of pollen cause such an extreme reaction?

那么，为什么带有这种花粉的罕见风暴会引起如此极端的反应呢?

University of Georgia researchers studied the Australian event and published a paper the following year. They found that downdrafts of cold air inside a storm send mold and pollen high into the clouds where humidity levels and lighting rupture the spores. Returning to the ground as much smaller fragments, the tiny particles can then pass through the nose and sinuses into the lungs.

乔治亚大学的研究人员研究了澳大利亚的这一事件，并在第二年发表了一篇论文。他们发现，风暴中的冷空气下降气流将霉菌和花粉送入云层，而云层中的湿度和光照会使孢子破裂。这些小颗粒回到地面后，可以通过鼻子和鼻窦进入肺部。

"In our study we found that pollen didn't rise in the days before the thunderstorm, which makes it odd to then attribute the increase in hospitalizations to pollen, at least exclusively," Jena said.

“在我们的研究中，我们发现花粉量在雷暴前几天并没有增加，这使得将住院人数的增加至少完全归因于花粉的说法很奇怪，”杰纳说。

Nor did levels of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone change in the days preceding a thunderstorm, Jena said. All levels, however, did drop after the storms ended.

杰纳说，在雷暴前几天，二氧化氮、二氧化硫、一氧化碳和臭氧的含量也没有变化。然而，在风暴结束后，所有的水平都下降了。

"Prior studies suggest that rapid temperature increases can precipitate respiratory problems, and we observed changes in temperature in the days prior to thunderstorms," he added.

他补充说:“之前的研究表明，温度快速上升会引发呼吸问题，而我们在雷暴前几天观察到了温度的变化。”

"The last thing to note is that this was a study of thousands of thunderstorms occurring across the US, matched to high-frequency data on environmental parameters and hospitalizations, which makes these findings potentially more generalizable than previous studies on this topic," Jena said.

杰纳说：“最后要注意的是，这是一项针对美国各地发生的数千次雷暴的研究，与环境参数和住院率的高频数据相匹配，这使得这些发现可能比以前关于这个主题的研究更具普遍性。”