Diurnal temperature range and mortality in Tabriz (the northwest of Iran)

Recently there has been a lot of interest in global warming and temperature variation's effect on health. This study evaluates the impact of Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR) on mortality in Tabriz, northwest of Iran. Distributed Lag Non-linear Models combined with a quasi-Poisson regression were used to assess the impact of DTR on cause, age and gender specific mortality, controlled for potential confounders such as long-term trend of daily mortality, day of week effect, holidays, mean temperature, humidity, wind speed and air pollutants. As the effect of DTR may vary between the hot season (from May to October) and cold season (from November to April of the next year), we conducted analyses separately for these two seasons. In high DTR values (all percentiles), the Cumulative Relative Risk (CRR) of Non-Accidental Death, Respiratory Death and Cardiovascular Death increased in the cold season. In full year and high DTR value (percentile 90), the CRR of respiratory deaths increased as well (CRR, Lag 0-6:1.32(1.006, 1.75). Although there was no clear significant effect in low DTR values, high values of DTR increase the risk of mortality in the cold season, in Tabriz, Iran.