RESEARCH - RA patients show weather sensitivity in daily life, but the relationship is not clinically significant

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Pain. 1999 May;81(1-2):173-7.

Rheumatoid arthritis patients show weather sensitivity in daily life,

but the relationship is not clinically significant.

Gorin AA, Smyth JM, Weisberg JN, Affleck G, Tennen H, Urrows S, Stone AA.

Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook,

11794-2500, USA.

While the majority of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients report that

their pain is influenced by the weather, studies examining the impact

of weather on RA pain have yielded equivocal results. It is not clear

from the existing studies if the mixed results are due to limited

statistical power (e.g. small sample sizes and restricted variability

in weather indices) or the failure to consider individual differences.

The current study addressed these weaknesses by having 75 RA patients

(mean age = 52.7; 71% female) record their daily pain severity for 75

consecutive days. Objective weather indices including temperature,

barometric pressure, relative humidity, and percentage of sunlight

were obtained for the same dates from a local weather service. The

results indicate that for the entire sample, pain levels were highest

on cold, overcast days and following days with high barometric

pressure. Pain levels also increased as a function of change in

relative humidity from one day to the next. Individual difference

analyses revealed significant variability between patients in their

weather sensitivity patterns. In general, patients with higher levels

of self-reported pain demonstrated more weather sensitivity. When

considering the magnitude of these effects, however, weather variables

accounted for only a small amount of change in pain scores. This

pattern was true even for patients with the most pronounced

pain-weather relationships. Thus, although weather sensitivity was

found, the effect sizes were not clinically meaningful.

PMID: 10353505

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10353505

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