Allergic multi-morbidity is associated with an increased risk of asthma in adults: a population-based case control study

Allergic multi-morbidity is associated with childhood asthma but this association is still poorly characterized in adults. The aim was to study the association between allergic multi-morbidity and adult asthma.We randomly selected 1648 adults with asthma (age range: 30-93) from Finnish national registers, matched for gender, age, and living region with one or two controls (n=3311). Allergic multi-morbidity was defined from self-questionnaire. Conditional logistic regression adjusted on potential confounders (smoking, growing in countryside, childhood pneumonia/hospitalization due to infection, parental asthma/allergy, parental smoking, education level, professional training, number of siblings, and birth order) were applied to estimate the asthma risk associated with allergic multi-morbidity.Altogether 1402 asthmatics and 2038 non-asthmatic adults were included. The presence of allergic rhinitis (51.1%), allergic conjunctivitis (40.6%) or allergic dermatitis (33.5%), and different combinations of them were associated with a higher risk of asthma. The asthma risk increased with the number of allergic diseases; as compared to no allergic disease, adjusted OR [CI95%] for 1, 2, and 3 allergic diseases were 2.29 [1.66-3.17], 2.91 [2.07-4.10], and 5.88 [3.82-9.06], respectively. The asthma risk associated with ≥1 allergic multi-morbidity increased with decreasing age (4.10 [2.65-6.37], 2.96[1.86-4.69] and 1.73 [0.98-3.06] in subjects<50yrs, 50-62yrs and >62 yrs, respective...
Source: European Respiratory Journal - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Epidemiology Source Type: research