© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Thoracic Society
EDITORIAL
Prevalence of asthma
Asthma prevalence in adults: good news?
1 Department of Epidemiology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany
2 Centre for Public Health Research, Research School of Public Health, Massey University Wellington Campus, New Zealand
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Prof Dr med S K Weiland MSc
Department of Epidemiology, University of Ulm, Helmholzstr. 22, 89081Ulm, Germany; stephan.weiland@medizin.uni-ulm.de
Time trends in asthma prevalence may have levelled off
Keywords: asthma; prevalence
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Few diseases have a relation to age which is as fascinating and complex as for asthma. It is a chronic but not necessarily lifelong condition. The incidence of asthma and wheezing illness peaks in very early childhood, but new incident cases occur throughout life.1–4 In many affected subjects, particularly children, it disappears after some time.2–4 However, in a substantial proportion of cases which have apparently lost the disease it will come back, often after many years.3,4 Another intriguing feature is that the sex ratio changes with age. Most studies show that boys are affected more often by wheezing illnesses than girls, but this sex ratio usually reverses during or shortly after puberty, partly due to a higher incidence in females.5–9
Most studies investigating the relationship between age and asthma have been performed in infants and children and, in fact, different age related phenotypes in childhood have been
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Airwaves
- Wisia Wedzicha
Thorax 2004 59: 637.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Asthma
-
Child health
-
Epidemiologic studies
-
Drugs: respiratory system
-
Health service research
- Relevant Article
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
