An analysis of admissions from 155 United States hospitals to determine the influence of weather on stroke incidence

Weather is the most frequently proposed factor driving apparent seasonal trends in stroke admissions. Here, we present the largest study of the association between weather and ischemic stroke in the USA to date. We consider admissions to 155 United States hospitals in 20 states during the five-year period from 2004 to 2008. The data set included 196,439 stroke admissions, which were classified as ischemic (n=98,930), hemorrhagic (n=18,960), or transient ischemic attack (n=78,549). Variations in stroke admissions were tested to determine if they tracked seasonal and transient weather patterns over the same time period. Using autocorrelation analyses, no significant seasonal changes in stroke admissions were observed over the study period. Using time-series analyses, no significant association was observed between any weather variable and any stroke subtype over the five-year study. This study suggests that seasonal associations between weather and stroke are highly confounded, and an association between weather and stroke is virtually non-existent. Therefore, previous studies reporting an association between specific weather patterns and stroke should be interpreted with caution.