Airwaves
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Women of reproductive age are more likely to be admitted to hospital for asthma than men, as pointed out by Forbes in his editorial which comments on two papers in this months Thorax on the association between asthma and female sex hormones. This observation has precipitated research on the link between asthma and the female sex hormone cycle, but the results of studies have been inconsistent. In this issue we publish two papers on this topic. Brenner and colleagues explore the relation between the phase of the menstrual cycle and presentations with acute asthma to the emergency department. In contrast to previous suggestions, they found no relation between asthma exacerbations and the perimenstrual phase. They conclude that both preovulatory and perimenstrual phases act as co-factors, worsening other triggers of acute asthma. As maternal sex hormones can theoretically influence the developing fetal immune system, Maitra and colleagues studied the association between
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.
