Studies Show Being Cold Doesn't Make It More Likely To Get A Cold. Does The Same Apply With Pneumonia?

[LisaL]

The volunteers were placed in a chilly environment and experienced a drop in body temperature of several degrees, but were no more likely to develop a cold. Another group of volunteers stayed warm, and all of them had the cold virus placed in their nose.

 

 

[pgrmdave]

It looks like pneumonia is affected by temperature. I can't access the full text, but here are two papers that find that temperatures of either extreme (heat or cold), and high humidity are both associated with increased hospitalization of people with pneumonia. However, it should be noted that it's mostly the very old and the very young who are affected, children younger than 5 and "the elderly" (the abstract is not more specific on age than that).


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673680926665
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935114001133

[jadinet]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that pneumonia is actually affected by the cold

[pgrmdave]

Well, maybe you read in the two papers I linked :-)  Do you remember what kind of publication it was that discussed temperature's affect on pneumonia? Maybe we can track down what it is you read so that we can analyze it critically and determine just what measurable effect temperature has and to what degree it is important compared to other variables (like age, general health prior to acquiring pneumonia, etc.)?