02 mars 2023
This is a feeling quite widely shared by people who suffer from joints: the cold and humidity tend to accentuate the pain. But is this a scientifically proven reality?
Gloomy skies, negative temperatures, humidity in the air: this is the cocktail that would explain why pain in the joints of the knees, hips or fingers would be felt more strongly when the weather is bad. In any case, it is a discourse widely heard in the offices of doctors and rheumatologists, which several teams of researchers wanted to verify. With rather mixed results.
One of the latest major studies on the subject, published in Nature in 2019, is the result of work by researchers from the University of Manchester. For around 6 months, more than 2,600 Britons filled in a smartphone app specially designed for the study every day. Equipped with a GPS, the application made it possible to link the level of pain felt daily by the participants and the weather data of the region in which they were.
The study concluded that wet and windy days with low atmospheric pressure increased the risk of feeling more pain by 20% than on an average day. And that the temperature also seemed to play a role: the less it was high and accompanied by wind and humidity, the greater the pain.
“Not clinically relevant”
But what is the scientific value of these “significant relationships” between weather and pain experienced? From study to study, the question seems difficult to settle for good. One of them, published in 2014 in the journal Painevaluated for two years the association between the pain of more than 200 patients suffering from hip osteoarthritis and meteorological variables.
If she confirmed “the general opinion of patients with osteoarthritis that barometric pressure and relative humidity influence the perceived symptoms of osteoarthritis”the contribution of meteorological variables to the severity of symptoms, evaluated at less than 1%, “not considered clinically relevant”.
Way of life ?
We can also cite this study conducted in 2015 on 810 elderly patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, hand and hip, in 6 European countries, which confirms “a causal relationship between joint pain and weather variables”but acknowledges that associations between daily weather changes and pain do not confirm this causality…
In short, if you “feel” your knees, fingers or hips more when the weather is cold and capricious, it may simply be a question of lifestyle, suggests Dr. Louis Bessette, head of the service. of rheumatology at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval on the website of the Chief Scientist of Québec. “When it’s cold or rainy, people stay indoors and move very little. It is the inactivity and not the cold temperature and the humidity, which would exacerbate the pain”.
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Source : Nature – Pain – The Journal of Rheumatology – Chief Scientist of the Quebec government – February 2023
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Written by : Charlotte David – Edited by: Emmanuel Ducreuzet
