The Disease Burden of Bronchiectasis in Korea: A National Database Study

The prevalence and disease burden of bronchiectasis in comparison to those of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have not been well elucidated using a national representative database. We compared respiratory symptoms, physical activity, quality of life, and socioeconomic status in subjects with bronchiectasis versus those with COPD or control subjects participating in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2009. Participants were classified as physician-diagnosed bronchiectasis, COPD and control (those without COPD or bronchiectasis). The prevalence of bronchiectasis in subjects aged 40 years or older was 0.8%. Compared to COPD subjects, bronchiectasis subjects were more likely to be younger (median 59.0 years, P=0.001), female (47.6%, P=0.049), and never-smoker (50.1%, P=0.049) and have had history of pulmonary tuberculosis (40.5%, P<0.001) and osteoporosis (19.1%, P<0.001). However, as in COPD subjects, bronchiectasis subjects had low family income (P<0.001) and the proportion of subjects working as manager/professional/office workers (6.4%, P<0.001) was smaller than that of control subjects. After adjusting for covariables, compared to control, bronchiectasis subjects but not COPD subjects were more likely to have respiratory symptoms (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 7.96, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.10-30.12), limitation in physical activity (adjusted OR = 9.43, 95% CI = 1.06-83.79), and low family income (adjusted OR = 3.61,...

Source: European Respiratory Journal - November 20, 2019 Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Yang, B., Park, H. Y., Kang, D., Cho, J., Lee, J. S., Lee, S. W., Oh, Y.-M., Kim, S.-H., Sohn, J. W., Yoon, H. J., Lee, H. Tags: Epidemiology Source Type: research