Asthma: distribution, familial association, evaluation a cross sectional study in north India

Abstract

All over the world asthma is a major cause of morbidity. To understand it we have to find out its associations, either if it is due to environmental factors or due to genetic inheritance or both are interacting in its etiology. In this study we found that some age groups (41 to 50 years) are at higher risk of asthma incidence than others and also the female sex was more prone to have asthma attacks during these years of life. We also found that other lung conditions like tuberculosis was also associated with asthma poor control or sometimes also precipitates acute attacks. As we also evaluated our patients with X-ray and spirometry, so we found that instead of good evidence of superiority of spirometry over X-ray in diagnosis and evaluation of asthma, even then patients were not interested in that investigation. In our evaluation of four cardinal symptoms of asthma we concluded that chest tightness was the first symptom that patient experience and also the last symptom to be relieved by treatment followed by breathlessness.  We also found that most of patients approaching physician were follow-up patients and only 15% had familial history of asthma.