CHARLS Data on Solid Fuel Use and Multisite Pain Risk in Chinese Adults

Chinese adults aged 45 years and older were followed for an average of 6.8 years in a longitudinal analysis from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The dataset, authored by ZhiGuo He and last updated in 2026, examines the association between indoor solid fuel use for heating or cooking and the risk of multisite pain burden disorders (MPBD). It contains results from Cox regression analyses, including hazard ratios and confidence intervals for different fuel use scenarios.

Use Cases

• Assessing the longitudinal health risk of solid fuel use based on hazard ratios for multisite pain.
• Comparing the impact of fuel switching on chronic pain outcomes based on the analysis of fuel transition patterns.
• Modeling the association between specific fuel applications (heating vs. cooking) and disease burden based on the defined MPBD outcome.

Strengths

• Longitudinal design with an average follow-up period of 6.8 years.
• Analysis includes specific case counts: 1,201 MPBD cases in heating analysis and 1,525 in cooking analysis.
• Results provide quantified hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals for different fuel use scenarios.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary data file is a DOCX document (460.9 KB), which is a very small and likely summary-level format rather than raw observational data.

Provenance

Source

China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)

Collection Method

Longitudinal cohort analysis using Cox regression.

Time Range

Average follow-up period of 6.8 years (specific start/end dates not provided).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 05:41:33; freshness should be verified.

Geography

China