title: Association of time of occurrence of electrical heart storms with environmental physical activity.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Many publications in recent decades have reported a temporal link between medical events and environmental physical activity. The aim of this study was to analyze the time of occurrence of electrical heart storms against levels of cosmological parameters.
  
  
  METHODS
  The sample included 82 patients (71 male) with ischemic cardiomyopathy treated with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator at a tertiary medical center in 1999-2012 (5,114 days). The time of occurrence of all electrical heart storms, defined as three or more events of ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation daily, was recorded from the defibrillator devices. Findings were analyzed against data on solar, geomagnetic, and cosmic ray (neutron) activity for the same time period obtained from space institutions in the United States and Russia.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Electrical storms occurred in all months of the year, with a slight decrease in July, August, and September. Most events took place on days with lower-than-average levels of solar and geomagnetic activity and higher-than-average levels of cosmic ray (neutron) activity. There was a significant difference in mean daily cosmic ray activity between the whole observation period and the days of electrical storm activity (P = 0.0001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These data extend earlier findings on the association of the timing of cardiac events and space weather parameters to the most dangerous form of cardiac arrhythmia-electric storms. Further studies are needed to delineate the pathogenetic mechanism underlying this association.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cardiology, Rabin Medical Center, Petach Tikva, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Eliiyahu
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Stoupel
authors.forename: Jairo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kusniec
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Golovchiner
authors.forename: Evgeny
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Abramson
authors.forename: Udi
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Kadmon
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Strasberg
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D017147:Defibrillators, Implantable; D055724:Electrophysiological Phenomena; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017180:Tachycardia, Ventricular / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology* / Q000628:therapy; D013997:Time Factors; D014693:Ventricular Fibrillation / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology* / Q000628:therapy; D014887:Weather
keywords: cosmic ray activity; electrical heart storm; geomagnetic activity; implantable cardiac defibrillator; solar activity