Analysis of the relationship between thermal comfort and salivary IgE in healthy adults under abrupt temperature

Abstract

The human body can directly exchange heat and air with the external environment through the respiratory system. Respiratory system immunity is the ability of the respiratory tract to resist pathogens entering via by the external microenvironment. There are many indicators of respiratory immunity, such as serum immunoglobulin IgA, IgD, IgE, and IgM levels. IgE has been found to change significantly with atmospheric temperature in the natural outdoor environment. The external microenvironment also includes the indoor artificial environment. In this study, IgE was used as an immunity indicator in healthy people. At the same time, three transient processes were set in the artificial climate chamber, from the low temperature environment of 15 °C in winter, to 18 °C, 24 °C and 30 °C. The correlation between the human immunity indicator IgE and thermal comfort was explored by combining forehead, core and mean skin temperatures. The results showed that in the process of temperature variations, the skin temperature was stable during 30 min and the forehead temperature was significantly correlated with subjective voting. When the temperature changed to the neutral ambient temperature of 24 °C, the IgE concentration increased significantly within 5 min. The IgE concentration was higher in a comfortable thermal environment at 24 °C. When the temperature suddenly deviated from the neutral temperature to 18 °C and 30 °C, the IgE concentration took a long time to change.