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New research led by the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) offers valuable insights for public health officials and communities in Nigeria as they navigate pregnancies amid rising heat and humidity.

The research focused on Nigeria, which is the most populous country in Africa, has one of the highest fertility rates in the world and is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The temperatures are high, but so is the humidity, which limits people’s ability to cool off and increases their risk of heat stroke. Humidity has received limited attention from studies investigating the effects of climate change on fertility and human health. That’s especially true of lower- and middle-income countries, including Nigeria.

This study shows how satellite and remotely sensed data can be integrated with large-scale health surveys to address that, and the team estimated the combined influence of air temperature and humidity. 

“There’s a fair amount of literature in epidemiology that looks at temperature and pregnancy outcomes, but most of it is in the U.S. and other high-income countries,” said Nina Brooks, assistant professor at SEAS and the lead author of the study. “Humidity plays a really important role in pregnancy heat, and we wanted to focus on the role of not just heat, but humid heat.”

Read the full press release on the Michigan News website. 

Study: Humid-heat shifts conceptions and increases pregnancy termination risks in Nigeria (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2321152122)