Pain and Weather Fail to Connect

疼痛和天气并不相关

A big data analysis involving more than 1.5 million patients could find no relationship between weather and complaints to doctors about joint or back pain.

一项包含150万名患者的大数据分析发现，天气和向医生抱怨关节或背部疼痛之间不存在联系。

撰文/播音：凯伦·霍普金（Karen Hopkin）

翻译：姜帆

审校：张清越

Are you one of those people who can tell when a storm is approaching based on your achy knees? Well, you may think you are. But a new study of more than 1.5 million seniors finds no relationship between rainfall and doctor visits for pain. The results are in the British Medical Journal. [Anupam B. Jena et al., Association between rainfall and diagnoses of joint or back pain: retrospective claims analysis]

你是那些能根据自己疼痛的膝盖判断暴风雨何时来临的人中的一员吗？好吧，或许你认为自己是。但是一项对150万老人的新研究发现下雨和因疼痛求医之间没有关系。这项研究的成果发表于期刊《英国医学杂志》。

The idea that our bodies are barometers for all sorts of weather-related phenomena—including changes in temperature, pressure and precipitation—is not a new one.

关于我们的身体是各种天气相关现象的晴雨表——包括温度，气压和降水变化在内——的观点已是老生常谈了。

“Hippocrates himself actually postulated this idea in nearly 400 B.C.” Anupam Jena, a physician and expert in health care policy at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study.

“这个想法实际上是希波克拉底自己在公元前400年左右推测出的。”领导这项研究的阿努邦·耶拿（Anupam Jena）说道，他是哈佛医学院和马萨诸塞州总医院的外科医生和保健政策的专家。

“If you talk to people, I’d say millions and millions of people probably believe that things like rainfall influence symptoms of joint pain and stiffness. But if you look at the studies, there’s actually been surprisingly little evidence to suggest that is true. Most of the studies have been quite small. And we were interested in thinking about whether we could approach this question in a ‘big data’ sort of way.”

“如果你和人们交谈，我会说数以百万计的人可能认为像降雨这样的事情会影响关节疼痛和僵硬的症状。但是如果你看看这些研究，就会发现实际上几乎没有证据表明这是真的。大多数研究的规模都相当小。我们正在考虑是否可以用“大数据”的方式来处理这个问题。”

He and his colleagues looked at information collected in more than 11 million visits that older Americans made to their primary care physicians. They compared these records with data on daily rainfall. And they asked: do more people report sore backs or swollen joints when the weather is inclement?

耶拿和他的同事们查看了1100多万次美国老人去看初级保健医生时收集的信息。他们将这些记录和每日降雨量数据进行比较，并且提出问题：在天气恶劣时，有更多人报告背部疼痛或关节肿胀吗？

“And what we found is if you look at days where it rained versus days where it didn’t rain, there is no difference in the proportion of visits to a doctor that involved a complaint of joint pain or back pain.”

“而且我们发现，如果你查看下雨与不下雨的日子，因关节或背部疼痛而看医生的比例没有区别。”

They saw no “rain effect” even when it poured for seven days straight. And if you’re thinking, well, what if people couldn’t get an appointment until the skies cleared up…

即使在连续下了七天雨时，他们也没有看出“下雨效应”。如果你在想，好吧，要是人们直到天空晴朗起来还没能预约到医生..

“And if you look the week after a period of heavy rainfall, you still see no relationship. And that doesn’t mean that factors like rainfall or temperature or humidity don’t affect joint pain and symptoms of joint achiness and stiffness. But in this sort of big data approach, we didn’t find any evidence for it.”

“而且如果你在大雨后一星期去查看，你仍然看不到任何联系。那不意味着如降雨或温度或湿度的因素不会影响关节疼痛以及关节粘连和僵硬的症状。但是在这种大数据方法中，我们没有找到任何证据的支持。”

Of course, it could still be that the pain from rain is not enough to complain. “It could be that patients take over-the-counter pain medications once these symptoms hit, and so when they see their doctor they’re not actually in enough pain to mention it.” And the casualties of low-pressure fronts simply move on—gingerly.

当然，也可能是下雨引起的疼痛不足以大惊小怪。“可能是这些症状一发作，病人就服用非处方止痛药，所以他们去看医生时，实际上没有足够的疼痛以至于提及此。”低气压地区的受害者们就这样继续生活下去了——小心翼翼地。

—Karen Hopkin

原文：

podcast/episode/pain-and-weather-fail-to-connect/