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Climate change and cardiovascular disease: implications for global health

Nature Reviews Cardiology volume 19, pages 798–812 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate change is the greatest existential challenge to planetary and human health and is dictated by a shift in the Earth’s weather and air conditions owing to anthropogenic activity. Climate change has resulted not only in extreme temperatures, but also in an increase in the frequency of droughts, wildfires, dust storms, coastal flooding, storm surges and hurricanes, as well as multiple compound and cascading events. The interactions between climate change and health outcomes are diverse and complex and include several exposure pathways that might promote the development of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease. A collaborative approach is needed to solve this climate crisis, whereby medical professionals, scientific researchers, public health officials and policymakers should work together to mitigate and limit the consequences of global warming. In this Review, we aim to provide an overview of the consequences of climate change on cardiovascular health, which result from direct exposure pathways, such as shifts in ambient temperature, air pollution, forest fires, desert (dust and sand) storms and extreme weather events. We also describe the populations that are most susceptible to the health effects caused by climate change and propose potential mitigation strategies, with an emphasis on collaboration at the scientific, governmental and policy levels.

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Fig. 1: The DPSEEA framework.
Fig. 2: The effect of climate change on the development of cardiovascular disease.
Fig. 3: Pathophysiological pathways involved in mediating the effects of temperature on cardiovascular disease.
Fig. 4: The effect of heat exposure on inflammatory and procoagulant cascades.
Fig. 5: Integrative climate change strategy.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are funded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences-KFAS (CR19-13NH-01), the Medical Research Council UK (MR/R013349/1), the Natural Environment Research Council UK (NE/R009384/1) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion (820655). This work was carried out on behalf of the Environmental Cardiovascular Collaborative (EnCC) Group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Haitham Khraishah

  2. Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Haitham Khraishah & Nirupama Vellanki

  3. Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA

    Barrak Alahmad & Antonella Zanobetti

  4. Environmental & Occupational Health Department, Faculty of Public Health, Kuwait University, Hawalli, Kuwait

    Barrak Alahmad

  5. Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA

    Robert L. Ostergard Jr

  6. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Abdelrahman AlAshqar

  7. Division of Cardiology, Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Toronto General Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Mazen Albaghdadi

  8. Department of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Department of Surgery, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Mohammed M. Chowdhury

  9. University Hospitals, Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute, Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Sadeer G. Al-Kindi & Sanjay Rajagopalan

  10. Centre for Statistical Methodology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Antonio Gasparrini

  11. Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Antonio Gasparrini

  12. Department of Public Health Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Antonio Gasparrini

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Contributions

H.K. and A.A. researched data for the article. H.K., B.A., R.L.O. Jr, M.A., S.G.A.-K., A.G. and S.R. contributed to the discussion of its content. H.K., B.A., R.L.O. Jr., A.A., N.V., M.M.C., A.Z. and S.R. wrote the manuscript. H.K., B.A., R.L.O. Jr., A.A., M.A., M.M.C., S.G.A.-K., A.Z., A.G. and S.R. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Haitham Khraishah.

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Nature Reviews Cardiology thanks Guoxing Li, Annette Peters and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Khraishah, H., Alahmad, B., Ostergard, R.L. et al. Climate change and cardiovascular disease: implications for global health. Nat Rev Cardiol 19, 798–812 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41569-022-00720-x

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