The epidemiological and clinical features of weather–related pain (TENKITSU) and development of prediction information service for the onset of pain

Abstract

Weather changes accompanied by decreases in barometric pressure are suggested to trigger meteoropathy, i.e., weather–related pain. In this paper, the epidemiological and clinical features of weather–related pain ( TENKITSU ) are shown and the mechanism is briefly described. From the weather pain survey 2020, it is estimated that there are at least 10 million people who have weather pain in Japan, but it seems that it is difficult to deal with it in general clinical practice. It is necessary to establish a highly accurate meteoro pathy forecast in order to establish effective preventive treatments. We conducted a large–scale Internet survey and built a predictive model. The survey period was about one year, and 35 surveys were done. We analyzed the correlation between the symptom reports obtained from weather news ( WN ) users ( 157,698 in total ) and the barometric pressure data. The barometric pressure change pattern that contributes to the onset of weather–related pain was indexed. We found that obvious changes in atmospheric pressure, minute changes in atmospheric pressure ( micro– pressure fluctuations ) which occur as a precursor to the collapse of the weather, and diurnal fluctuations in atmospheric pressure ( atmospheric tide ) correlate with worsening of symptoms. Therefore, we weighted the contributions of these three factors, built a model that predicts the risk of developing weather pain up to 6 days ahead every 3 hours, and started using it at WN.