Abstract Background In Hungary, approximately 30,000 people suffer from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) each year. While several risk factors for AMI are well known, fluctuations in case numbers over time suggest a possible relationship between temperature, air pollution, and AMI incidence rates. Purpose To explore potential correlations between national AMI case rates and temperature trends. Methods The correlations between AMI cases recorded in the Hungarian National Myocardial Infarction Registry from 2014 to 2023 and daily temperature and air pollution data from the National Meteorological Service were analyzed using various artificial intelligence-based mathematical models, including Poisson regression and eXtreme Gradient Boosting. Our method assigns weights to points within an environmental factor space, allowing for the detection of significant associations through density ratio analysis. After identifying outliers in the number of cases (top and bottom 10% based on Z-scores), we analyzed the potential influence of atmospheric parameters using distribution analysis and density ratio heatmaps. Results The incidence of myocardial infarctions during the winter months is closely linked to the average temperature recorded on a given day. Days with extreme case numbers are associated with days of extreme average temperatures. In summer, when average temperatures exceed 20°C, both low and high case number days become more frequent, and the number of cases fluctuates more significantly. When the average temperature exceeds 25°C, the proportion of days in the top 10% of case numbers decreases by at least 10%. During the winter months, cold weather (average temperature below -1°C) increases the number of infarction cases compared to the average daily case numbers for the given period. Under such conditions, the proportion of days falling into the top 10% of case numbers rises by at least 15%. Conclusions These results may provide an opportunity in the future to better identify patient groups with increased vulnerability to AMI under specific meteorological and air pollution conditions.Heatmap winter Heatmap summer
Nagy et al. (2025) studied this question.