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Heat Exposure and Antihypertensive Treatment: Unravelling causal Pathways

Project description

How heatwaves impact hypertensive individuals

Heatwaves raise the risk of hospitalisation and death for those with cardiovascular diseases. Although hypertension needs medication for control, some antihypertensive drugs may worsen dehydration during heatwaves. There are no clinical guidelines for managing hypertension in these conditions. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the HEAT-UP project will investigate how heatwaves impact emergency hospital visits among individuals taking various antihypertensive medications. It will focus on the link between heatwaves and orthostatic hypotension, which can lead to dizziness, falls, and injuries. The project will also develop a heat vulnerability index to inform counselling for hypertensive patients in high-risk areas, using advanced causal inference methods and data from Dutch and French administrative and hospital databases.

Objective

Heatwaves have increased in frequency, duration, and intensity over the past decades, placing individuals with cardiovascular diseases at higher risk of hospitalisation and death. Hypertension affects a third of adults and is a key risk factor for these diseases. Blood pressure control through medication is essential to prevent adverse cardiovascular events during and between heatwaves. However, concerns arise that antihypertensive drugs may increase the risks of hospitalisation and mortality during heatwaves. Certain antihypertensive drugs or their combinations may worsen dehydration, inhibit thirst perception, and interfere with heat adaptation. There is a lack of clinical guidelines for hypertension management during heatwaves.

To address this, I propose the HEAT-UP project, which aims to use expertise from environmental epidemiology, clinical practice, urban planning, geography, and causal inference to i) measure how the causal effects of heatwaves on emergency hospital visits vary across individuals taking different antihypertensive drugs, ii) map how heatwaves contribute to orthostatic hypotension when standing blood pressure drops, potentially leading to dizziness and falls, injury, and death across people with different antihypertensive treatments, and iii) develop a heat vulnerability index to support counselling interventions for hypertensive patients in areas with overheating risk.

This project will integrate advanced causal inference methods (causal random forest, case time series) and complementary data sources (French, Dutch administrative databases, and hospital databases). The findings will inform stakeholders creating safe treatment guidelines for hypertensive patients during heatwaves, as well as improve monitoring in vulnerable areas with limited medical access. This project will broaden my scientific expertise (technical and transferable skills) and my international network for pursuing an academic career and becoming an independent researcher.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

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Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE
Net EU contribution
€ 242 260,56
Address
RUE DE TOLBIAC 101
75654 Paris
France
Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
No data

Partners (1)