Asthma: A Woman’s Issue

Every day in America, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America,

• 40,000 people miss school or work due to asthma.
• 30,000 people have an asthma attack.
• 5,000 people visit the emergency room due to asthma.
• 1,000 people are admitted to the hospital due to asthma.
• 14 people die from asthma.

And more of them are female than male.

Childhood asthma is more common in boys, but a switch seems to occur around age 15, when prevalence begins to increase in girls and decrease in boys.  Few would argue it’s just a coincidence that age15 also happens to be prime time for puberty and changing hormones.

In a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control, doctors reported that women have a much higher rate of having asthma in the United States.  Just over 8.8 percent of women currently have asthma versus only 6.4 percent of men.

“At any given level of airway obstruction, women report more symptoms than men,” said Dr. Carlos A. Camargo, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston.  “The reason is not clear, but it may be due to the fact that women’s airways are generally smaller.  A fifty percent decrease in the size of the airways during an asthma exacerbation creates a relatively smaller tube through which to breathe.”

So what’s a woman to do?

Obesity seems to increase both prevalence and lack of asthma control for women but not men.  The reasons are unknown, but some think the relationship could be hormonal.  Fat makes estrogen, so obese women tend to have higher levels of estrogen.  Even without conclusive data, the solution seems to be that obese women with asthma should lose weight.  They should also quit smoking and start exercising more.

Improving bone health should be another high priority for women with asthma.  High doses of corticosteroids, used often to treat asthma, have been shown to increase the risk of osteoporosis, a condition that poses a significantly bigger threat to women than it does to men. 

Of the estimated 10 million Americans who have osteoporosis, 8 million are women, and 2 million are men, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation. One in two women, as opposed to only one in four men, over age 50 will suffer an osteoporosis-related fracture in her remaining lifetime.

So there are more risks for women with asthma, and more reasons to take charge of their health.          

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