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      The Coexistence of Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): Prevalence and Risk Factors in Young, Middle-aged and Elderly People from the General Population

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          Abstract

          Background

          The joint distribution of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has not been well described. This study aims at determining the prevalence of self-reported physician diagnoses of asthma, COPD and of the asthma-COPD overlap syndrome and to assess whether these conditions share a common set of risk factors.

          Methods

          A screening questionnaire on respiratory symptoms, diagnoses and risk factors was administered by mail or phone to random samples of the general Italian population aged 20–44 (n = 5163) 45–64 (n = 2167) and 65–84 (n = 1030) in the frame of the multicentre Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases (GEIRD) study.

          Results

          A physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD (emphysema/chronic bronchitis/COPD) was reported by 13% and 21% of subjects aged <65 and 65–84 years respectively. Aging was associated with a marked decrease in the prevalence of diagnosed asthma (from 8.2% to 1.6%) and with a marked increase in the prevalence of diagnosed COPD (from 3.3% to 13.3%). The prevalence of the overlap of asthma and COPD was 1.6% (1.3%–2.0%), 2.1% (1.5%–2.8%) and 4.5% (3.2%–5.9%) in the 20–44, 45–64 and 65–84 age groups. Subjects with both asthma and COPD diagnoses were more likely to have respiratory symptoms, physical impairment, and to report hospital admissions compared to asthma or COPD alone (p<0.01). Age, sex, education and smoking showed different and sometimes opposite associations with the three conditions.

          Conclusion

          Asthma and COPD are common in the general population, and they coexist in a substantial proportion of subjects. The asthma-COPD overlap syndrome represents an important clinical phenotype that deserves more medical attention and further research.

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          Most cited references31

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          Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in non-smokers.

          Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Tobacco smoking is established as a major risk factor, but emerging evidence suggests that other risk factors are important, especially in developing countries. An estimated 25-45% of patients with COPD have never smoked; the burden of non-smoking COPD is therefore much higher than previously believed. About 3 billion people, half the worldwide population, are exposed to smoke from biomass fuel compared with 1.01 billion people who smoke tobacco, which suggests that exposure to biomass smoke might be the biggest risk factor for COPD globally. We review the evidence for the association of COPD with biomass fuel, occupational exposure to dusts and gases, history of pulmonary tuberculosis, chronic asthma, respiratory-tract infections during childhood, outdoor air pollution, and poor socioeconomic status.
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            Worldwide variation in prevalence of symptoms of asthma, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and atopic eczema: ISAAC. The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) Steering Committee.

            Systematic international comparisons of the prevalences of asthma and other allergic disorders in children are needed for better understanding of their global epidemiology, to generate new hypotheses, and to assess existing hypotheses of possible causes. We investigated worldwide prevalence of asthma, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and atopic eczema. We studied 463,801 children aged 13-14 years in 155 collaborating centres in 56 countries. Children self-reported, through one-page questionnaires, symptoms of these three atopic disorders. In 99 centres in 42 countries, a video asthma questionnaire was also used for 304,796 children. We found differences of between 20-fold and 60-fold between centres in the prevalence of symptoms of asthma, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and atopic eczema, with four-fold to 12-fold variations between the 10th and 90th percentiles for the different disorders. For asthma symptoms, the highest 12-month prevalences were from centres in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Republic of Ireland, followed by most centres in North, Central, and South America; the lowest prevalences were from centres in several Eastern European countries, Indonesia, Greece, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, India, and Ethiopia. For allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, the centres with the highest prevalences were scattered across the world. The centres with the lowest prevalences were similar to those for asthma symptoms. For atopic eczema, the highest prevalences came from scattered centres, including some from Scandinavia and Africa that were not among centres with the highest asthma prevalences; the lowest prevalence rates of atopic eczema were similar in centres, as for asthma symptoms. The variation in the prevalences of asthma, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and atopic-eczema symptoms is striking between different centres throughout the world. These findings will form the basis of further studies to investigate factors that potentially lead to these international patterns.
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              A 15-year follow-up study of ventilatory function in adults with asthma.

              Although the prevalence of asthma and morbidity related to asthma are increasing, little is known about the natural history of lung function in adults with this disease. We used data from a longitudinal epidemiologic study of the general population in a Danish city, the Copenhagen City Heart Study, to analyze changes over time in the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) in adults with self-reported asthma and adults without asthma. The study was conducted between 1976 and 1994; for each patient, three measurements of lung function were obtained over a 15-year period. The final data set consisted of measurements from 17,506 subjects (8136 men and 9370 women), of whom 1095 had asthma. Among subjects who participated in all three evaluations, the unadjusted decline in FEV1 among subjects with asthma was 38 ml per year, as compared with 22 ml per year in those without asthma. The decline in FEV1 normalized for height (FEV1 divided by the square of the height in meters) was greater among the subjects with asthma than among those without the disease (P<0.001). Among both men and women, and among both smokers and nonsmokers, subjects with asthma had greater declines in FEV1 over time than those without asthma (P<0.001). At the age of 60 years, a 175-cm-tall nonsmoking man without asthma had an average FEV1 of 3.05 liters, as compared with 1.99 liters for a man of similar age and height who smoked and had asthma. In a sample of the general population, people who identified themselves as having asthma had substantially greater declines in FEV1 over time than those who did not.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2013
                10 May 2013
                : 8
                : 5
                : e62985
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Unit of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
                [2 ]Allergy Unit, Dept of Immuno-Allergic and Respiratory Diseases, Ospedali Riuniti di Ancona, Ancona, Italy
                [3 ]Unit of Respiratory Medicine, ASL TO-2, Torino, Italy
                [4 ]Unit of Respiratory Diseases, Dept of Internal Medicine, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy
                [5 ]Unit of Internal Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
                [6 ]Medical Affairs Department, Chiesi Farmaceutici, Parma, Italy
                [7 ]Epidemiology Unit, ASL SA-2, Salerno, Italy
                [8 ]Institute for Respiratory Diseases, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy
                [9 ]Unit of Respiratory Diseases, IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
                Cardiff University, United Kingdom
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors confirm that Gabriele Nicolini is an employe of the “Chiesi Farmaceutici, Parma, Italy,” one of the commercial funders of this research. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                Reviewed the manuscript, contributed to its scientific content and approved the final version of it: RdM GP AM SA LA MB LC MF GN MGP PP MEZ IC GV. Conceived and designed the experiments: RdM. Analyzed the data: GP. Wrote the paper: RdM GP AM.

                Article
                PONE-D-13-03419
                10.1371/journal.pone.0062985
                3651288
                23675448
                5d0e1903-4423-4532-9f6a-ed4217e3f769
                Copyright @ 2013

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 15 January 2013
                : 26 March 2013
                Page count
                Pages: 7
                Funding
                The GEIRD project was funded by: the Cariverona Foundation, the Italian Ministry of Health, Chiesi Farmaceutici, and the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Population Biology
                Epidemiology
                Medicine
                Anatomy and Physiology
                Respiratory System
                Clinical Research Design
                Survey Research
                Epidemiology
                Lifecourse Epidemiology
                Survey Methods
                Public Health
                Health Screening
                Pulmonology
                Asthma
                Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

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                Uncategorized

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