Association between El Niño-Southern Oscillation events and stroke: a case-crossover study in Kaunas city, Lithuania, 2000–2015

The aim of this study was to determine the association between the daily number of cases of ischemic stroke (IS) and hemorrhagic stroke (HS) in patients aged 25–64 years and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events during 2000–2015. As an indicator of the effect of the ENSO, the monthly NIÑO 3.4 index (Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature) was used. During the 5844-day study period, 5600 cases of stroke (3170 (56.61%) in men and 2430 (43.39%) in women) were analyzed. Of these, 4354 (77.8%) cases were IS, and 1041 (18.6%) cases were HS. In 3496 (62.2%) cases, stroke occurred in the age group of 55–64 years. In the analysis, we used the following categories of the ENSO events: strong La Niña, moderate La Niña, moderate El Niño, and strong El Niño. The effect of the ENSO was examined by using the multivariate Poisson regression adjusting for weather variables. The highest risk of both strokes (BS) was observed on days of strong and moderate La Niña (rate ratio (RR) 1.27, 95% CI 1.13–1.42) and RR = 1.15 (1.07–1.23), respectively), while the risk for IS was the highest on days of moderate El Niño (RR = 1.11(1.02–1.20)). A lower risk for BS was found on days of strong El Niño (RR = 0.77(0.62–0.97)). We found that ENSO events affected the occurrence of BS and IS in all age groups, and the strongest effect was observed among females. The results of this study provide new evidence that ENSO events may affect the risk of stroke, especially the risk of IS. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00484-021-02235-5.