Women Are More Often Hospitalized for Asthma Than Men; Young Boys Are Hospitalized Because of Asthma More Often Than Girls
A study of 1,286 hospitalized acute asthma patients has shown that, while males are more often hospitalized as children, females are hospitalized more often as adults. The study showed no gender differences in asthma severity markers in children, but hospitalized women with asthma have less severe airway obstruction on admission than men.
“These results are consistent with the observation that asthma is more prevalent in young boys than girls,” said Michael Schatz, M.D., M.S., Chief of the Department of Allergy, Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center. “These and other data suggest that greater distress in response to a given level of airway obstruction may contribute to the increased proportion of adult women versus men who are hospitalized with asthma.”
The study is published in the January edition of Chest, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians. In addition to Dr. Schatz, the other authors of the study are Sunday Clark, M.P.H., Sc.D., and Carlos A. Camargo, Jr., M.D., Dr.P.H., both of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital.
Data were collected from 30 United States hospitals as part of the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) Asthma Clinical Benchmarking Project. The study assessed 606 pediatric patients ages two to 17, and 680 adults ages 18 to 54.
Forty percent of the patients admitted to the hospital for treatment of asthma symptoms were girls ages two to 17 while 68 percent were women age 18 to 54.
Among the adults studied, women were more likely than men to have a primary care provider. “We did not find any other treatment differences that could account for the gender disparities in hospitalization rates in the two age groups,” said Schatz. “Additional studies are definitely needed to better understand the mechanism at work in this condition.”
Kaiser Permanente (www.kaiserpermanente.org) is America’s leading integrated health plan. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group practice prepayment program with Southern California headquarters in Pasadena. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 3.1 million members in Southern California. Today it encompasses the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries, and the for-profit Southern California Permanente Medical Group. Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California Region includes more than 47,530 technical, administrative and clerical employees and caregivers, and more than 5,200 physicians representing all specialties.