Article #	3311
Journal	Rhinology 0 - 0
Article Title	Seasonality in the incidence of acute sinusitis, air pollutant levels, and climate
Abstract	Introduction: Emerging evidence from epidemiological studies highlights the interaction between air quality metrics and sinusitis occurrence. This study investigates the relationship between acute sinusitis incidence, air pollutant levels, and climatic conditions in Taiwan from 2008 to 2017. Methods: This study extracted outpatient claims data from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2010. We computed seasonal incidence rates of acute sinusitis episodes per 1000 population over 120 months, stratifying the data by gender and three age groups: 20-44, 45-64, and 65 years and older. Addressing the seasonal variability inherent in our dataset, we utilized Auto-Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) models to analyze each variable as a univariate time series influenced by its historical values. Results: The analysis reveals that, except relative humidity, all other climatic factors including CO, NO2, SO2, PM10, O3, ambient temperature and rainfall demonstrated significant crude correlations with the rates of acute sinusitis. The ARIMA test suggested that seasonality plays a significant role in influencing sinusitis episodes across all age groups. Specifically, individuals experience significantly higher incidence rates during winter compared to spring. These findings underscore winter as a period with notably higher incidence rates of acute sinusitis, even after adjusting for meteorological and air pollution variables. Conclusions: This study provides comprehensive evidence of the significant associations between acute sinusitis incidence, air quality, and climatic factors in Taiwan.
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