Climate Change and Cardiovascular Health

About this Research Topic

Background

Climate change is considered the single biggest health threat that humanity is facing. Indeed, climate change is an invisible and deadly threat with wide-ranging adverse effects on people's health and well-being. Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity, and their impacts are felt disproportionately by individuals, especially vulnerable populations such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients. These patients are consistently the most susceptible to extreme weather due to compromised cardiovascular responses to environmental stress. As climate change already confers an increased risk of CVD events in the general population, the urgency to advance our understanding of the effects of extreme weather on patients with CVD and factors contributing to their vulnerability is crucial. In addition, population ageing, along with the increased incidence of CVD, are significant factors in determining future temperature-related health outcomes.
Despite this knowledge, our understanding of how those with CVD respond to environmental extremes is severely lacking. This Research Topic will offer the opportunity to advance our understanding of cardiovascular responses of CVD patients towards increased or lowered temperature or other environmental variables.

To address our knowledge of how patients with CVD experience disproportionate, multiple, and complex risks to their health and well-being in response to climate change, we encourage investigators to contribute original research articles assessing the impact of extreme weather such as heat or cold on various types of CVD patients either at rest or during physical activity. Furthermore, we welcome review articles summarizing the current state of understanding concerning CVD and climate change that will stimulate and potentiate efforts to improve our knowledge of this threat.
Our goal is to provide an up-to-date overview of the potential health hazards that climate change might induce among a selected population and emphasize the need for developing preventive policies.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

- Clinical studies on physiology and pathophysiology responses of CVD patients to thermal stress
- Clinical studies on physiology and pathophysiology responses of CVD patients to cold exposure
- Basic research of CVD patients' cardiovascular responses to extreme weather
- Systemic circulation of CVD patients and extreme weather
- Cardiovascular risks of climate change
- Effects of air pollution on CVD patients

Topic Editors declare no conflict of interest.

Keywords: cardiovascular, climate change, CVD, extreme weather, heat and cold exposure environmental

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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