Beyond heatwaves and cold spells: Long-term exposure to short-duration extremes, behavioural pathways, and hypertension risk in a national Chinese cohort.

Long-term exposure to short-duration cold and heat extremes is linked to increased hypertension risk in a Chinese cohort, with hazard ratios up to 1.06.

• Why it matters: Understanding how climate change-related extreme temperature events contribute to chronic cardiovascular diseases is crucial, especially as their frequency and intensity increase globally. The behavioral pathways that may modify this risk are also not well understood, limiting effective prevention strategies.
• What they did: Researchers developed a new modeling approach that simultaneously examines four types of extreme temperature events—cold spells, short-duration cold extremes, heatwaves, and short-duration heat extremes—using Cox models and four-way decomposition on data from 8,147 participants in the China Health and Nutrition Survey.
• The result: Findings show that short-duration cold and heat extremes are associated with higher hypertension risk, especially at higher exposure levels, and that lifestyle behaviors such as physical activity, sleep, and sedentary time modify this risk, highlighting potential intervention points.