If asthma is experienced for the very first time after the age of twenty, women are much greater risk of becoming affected than men. Actually, 75 per cent of all adults hospitalized for the treatment of asthma are women. And also remain hospitalized longer for asthma than men of the same age group.
Although asthma affecting adults is less widespread than asthma in children, it can also be triggered by several allergies. Between thirty and fifty per cent of all adult cases are connected with allergies, however frequently allergic exposures don’t seem to be the most significant, driving factors. This non-allergic adult-onset asthma is also known as "intrinsic."
In terms of men, occupational exposure to chemical substances and organic dust is responsible for an estimated fifteen per cent of asthma cases. Unluckily, these cases can be easily misdiagnosed as chronic bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and not treated properly.
The fact that women are more susceptible to asthma indicates that female sex hormones play some important role. Data obtained from Harvard’s ongoing Nurses Health Study, which has followed 121,700 female registered nurses since 1976, proved that postmenopausal women who took estrogen as hormone replacement for ten years or more were fifty per cent more probable to experience asthma than were women who have never used estrogen.
According to the latest study, women suffering from asthma are at greater risk of having a serious attack immediately before or in the course of their menstrual period. The research at the Medical College of Pennsylvania discovered that twice as many women sought emergency asthma treatment in the course of the beginning of their menstruation or the first days of period, in comparison to the middle of their menstrual cycle. The fewest number of women asked for treatment toward the end of their menstruation. Some scientists are convinced that adult-onset attacks are connected with the sharp decrease in levels of estradiol, a kind of estrogen occurring in the days before period.
