Nearly two-thirds of women who develop asthma as adults have a nonallergic form of the disease compared with just one-third of men, report Bénédicte Leynaert (INSERM Unité 700, Paris, France) and colleagues in Thorax.
"Although women with severe nonallergic asthma may represent a substantial proportion of adults with asthma in clinical practice, gender differences in the incidence of allergic and non-allergic asthma have been little investigated in the general population," say the researchers.
To address this, they evaluated gender differences in asthma prevalence and incidence among 9091 men and women randomly selected from the general population in 14 different countries. The individuals, who were participants of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, were followed up after 8-10 years. Bronchial responsiveness, immunoglobulin (Ig)-E specific to four common allergens, and skin test reactivity to nine allergens were measured in all participants at baseline.
The researchers report that there was no gender difference in the prevalence of asthma at baseline among participants aged 20-35 years. However, women were a significant 21% more likely to have asthma than men after age 35 years, and the difference was consistent across participating centers, despite geographic variations in the prevalence of asthma.
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