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Review
. 2019 Jan 22;85(1):2.
doi: 10.5334/aogh.2412.

The Global Impact of Asthma in Adult Populations

Oladunni Enilari  1 , Sumita Sinha  2
Affiliations
Review

The Global Impact of Asthma in Adult Populations

Oladunni Enilari et al. Ann Glob Health. .

Abstract

Asthma is a disease characterized by chronic airway inflammation, leading to intermittent symptoms of wheeze, dyspnea, cough and chest tightness in combination with variable expiratory airway obstruction. Clinical diagnosis is usually established based on the presence of symptoms and documented variability in expiratory airflow limitation as measured by pulmonary function testing. Presently, asthma is a major chronic disease affecting approximately 334 million people worldwide. The epidemic spares no age group, race or ethnicity; however ethnicity and socioeconomic status do influence the prevalence, morbidity and mortality of asthma in the United States and various countries throughout the world. Moreover, asthma places a huge burden at the societal, financial and health-care levels of multiple nations.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prevalence of symptoms of asthma in the past 12 months among persons aged 18 to 45 years in 70 countries, Worlds Health Survey 2002–2003. Source: To T, et al. BMC Public Health 2012.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Age-standardised asthma mortality rates for all ages 2001–2010 from countries where asthma is separately coaded as a cause of death, ordered by mortality rate and country income group.* Source: WHO Detailed Mortality Database, February 2014 update.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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