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Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs

Climate change generates negative impacts on human health. However, little is known about specific impacts on eye diseases, especially in arid and semi-arid areas where increases in air temperatures are expected. Therefore, the main goals of this research are: (i) to highlight the association betwee...

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Autores principales: Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía, Senciales-González, José Mᵃ, Medialdea-Hurtado, María Eloísa, Rodrigo-Comino, Jesús
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8297364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34281132
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137197
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author Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía
Senciales-González, José Mᵃ
Medialdea-Hurtado, María Eloísa
Rodrigo-Comino, Jesús
author_facet Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía
Senciales-González, José Mᵃ
Medialdea-Hurtado, María Eloísa
Rodrigo-Comino, Jesús
author_sort Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía
collection PubMed
description Climate change generates negative impacts on human health. However, little is known about specific impacts on eye diseases, especially in arid and semi-arid areas where increases in air temperatures are expected. Therefore, the main goals of this research are: (i) to highlight the association between common eye diseases and environmental factors; and (ii) to analyze, through the available literature, the health expenditure involved in combating these diseases and the savings from mitigating the environmental factors that aggravate them. Mixed methods were used to assess the cross-variables (environmental factors, eye diseases, health costs). Considering Southern Spain as an example, our results showed that areas with similar climatic conditions could increase eye diseases due to a sustained increase in temperatures and torrential rains, among other factors. We highlight that an increase in eye diseases in Southern Spain is conditioned by the effects of climate change by up to 36.5%; the economic burden of the main eye diseases, extrapolated to the rest of the country, would represent an annual burden of 0.7% of Spain’s Gross Domestic Product. In conclusion, the increase in eye diseases has a strong economic and social impact that could be reduced with proper management of the effects of climate change. We propose a new concept: disease sink, defined as any climate change mitigation action which reduces the incidence or morbidity of disease.
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spelling pubmed-82973642021-07-23 Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía Senciales-González, José Mᵃ Medialdea-Hurtado, María Eloísa Rodrigo-Comino, Jesús Int J Environ Res Public Health Review Climate change generates negative impacts on human health. However, little is known about specific impacts on eye diseases, especially in arid and semi-arid areas where increases in air temperatures are expected. Therefore, the main goals of this research are: (i) to highlight the association between common eye diseases and environmental factors; and (ii) to analyze, through the available literature, the health expenditure involved in combating these diseases and the savings from mitigating the environmental factors that aggravate them. Mixed methods were used to assess the cross-variables (environmental factors, eye diseases, health costs). Considering Southern Spain as an example, our results showed that areas with similar climatic conditions could increase eye diseases due to a sustained increase in temperatures and torrential rains, among other factors. We highlight that an increase in eye diseases in Southern Spain is conditioned by the effects of climate change by up to 36.5%; the economic burden of the main eye diseases, extrapolated to the rest of the country, would represent an annual burden of 0.7% of Spain’s Gross Domestic Product. In conclusion, the increase in eye diseases has a strong economic and social impact that could be reduced with proper management of the effects of climate change. We propose a new concept: disease sink, defined as any climate change mitigation action which reduces the incidence or morbidity of disease. MDPI 2021-07-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8297364/ /pubmed/34281132 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137197 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Echevarría-Lucas, Lucía
Senciales-González, José Mᵃ
Medialdea-Hurtado, María Eloísa
Rodrigo-Comino, Jesús
Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title_full Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title_fullStr Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title_full_unstemmed Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title_short Impact of Climate Change on Eye Diseases and Associated Economical Costs
title_sort impact of climate change on eye diseases and associated economical costs
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8297364/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34281132
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137197
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