Autumn and Seasonal Affective Disorder and Acute Coronary Syndrome

It’s this time of the year again, autumn. The time for great wines and game and truffle and ….. Also time for some of us to sit behind your lamps every morning for half an hour for two weeks on stretch against seasonal affective disorder.

Depressive disorder is not the only disease influenced by seasonality. In a large retrospective study in Bejing the presentation of Acute Coronary Syndrome which usually presents in the late stages of coronary heart disease also has a significantly seasonal and monthly rhythm.

The highest seasonal incidence occurred in winter and decreased as the season changed from winter to autumn, the monthly cases reached it’s high in March and it’s lowest in September as can be seen in the graphs above.

Beijing is characterized by warm temperate subhumid continental monsoon climatic zone with 4 distinct seasons. Seasons are defined as spring (March to May), summer (June to August), autumn (from September to November), and winter (from December to February).

They also looked at other weather conditions. Acute coronary syndrome had an inverse relationship with temperature and barometric pressure. Any other seasonality disorders?

Li, Y., Du, T., Lewin, M., Wang, H., Ji, X., Zhang, Y., Xu, T., Xu, L., & Wu, J. (2010). The seasonality of acute coronary syndrome and its relations with climatic parameters The American Journal of Emergency Medicine DOI: 10.1016/j.ajem.2010.02.027