Effect of gender on onset age of asthmatic patients

    WEI Weiª²Li, QIU Zhongª²Min, L¦a Hanª²Jing

    Department of Respiratory Medicine, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai 200065, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To investigate the effect of gender on the onset age of asthmatic patients. METHODS: A questionnaire survey was performed in 230 lifetime nonª²smoking asthmatic patients successively recruited into Department of Respiratory Medicine and Department of Pediatrics in our hospital from March to December in 2003. The patients were asked to answer questions including age, sex, the date of first onset of wheezing, existence of chronic cough and its persistence. RESULTS: In the 226 patients qualified for questionnaire, 89 patients (39%) showed chronic persistent cough before the first onset of wheezing, of whom the incidence of chronic cough in female asthmatic patients was significantly higher than that in male (47.4% vs 33.6%, ¦Ö2=4.38, P<0.05). The asthmatic symptoms, including chronic cough and wheezing, occurred later in female (median=29 years old) than in male (median=13 years old). The younger in age the patients who suffered from chronic cough, the shorter the period of chronic cough before the first onset of wheezing (rs=0.60213 ......