New Research Shows Asthma Variations Between Men and Women

According to data presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference, women with asthma had a lower rate of disease control and a higher risk of exacerbations than men.

Be that as it may, while women additionally have all the more small airway dysfunction, persistent airflow limitations are more prevalent among male patients, Susan Muiser, MD, department of pulmonology, University Medical Center Groningen, and colleagues wrote.

“It is already known that there is a sex disparity in asthma and that this sex disparity is multifactorial. However, a lot is still unknown,” Muiser told Healio.

Past examinations about sex differences in patients with asthma, Muiser said, needed broad clinical characterization or data about contrasts across all asthma severities. She went on to say that they frequently failed to take into account the severity and presence of small airway dysfunction (SAD).

“With the ATLANTIS study, we have an opportunity to gain more knowledge about these topics,” Muiser said.

For a year, the observational cohort ATLANTIS study followed 773 adults with mild, moderate, or severe asthma from nine countries, 58% of whom were women.

“In the ATLANTIS study, we show that female patients have more SAD as reflected by worse impulse oscillometry (IOS) results,” Muiser said.

Depending on which Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) treatment step they were on, the women had more severe asthma at baseline than the men did (P =.042). Asthma Control Questionnaire scores included 0.83 for the ladies and 0.66 for the men (P < .001).

According to Muiser, total impulse resistance at 5 Hz minus 20 Hz (R5-R20) totals for women were 0.06 kPa/L/second, while men’s totals were 0.04 kPa/L/second. Areas under the curve for women were 0.41 HzkPa/L/second, while men’s totals were 0.23 HzkPa/L/second (P.001), indicating that women experienced more SAD.

In any case, the men were diagnosed with asthma at a median age of 22 years though the ladies were diagnosed at a median age of 26.04 years (P = .028), and persistent airflow limitations were more successive among men (n = 193; 60.5%) compared to 196 women (n = 44.3%; P < .001).

Alongside higher blood eosinophil and monocyte levels, the specialists called female sex an independent predictor of expanded risk for exacerbations.

According to Muiser, ATLANTIS is the first study with such a large sample size to demonstrate significant differences in all IOS results between men and women with asthma. This suggests that women with asthma have greater resistance in the central and peripheral airways.

She went on to say that clinicians should take sex into account when determining reference values for IOS results because proper reference values are currently lacking.

“The results of this study reaffirm that, in adulthood, female asthma patients experience more symptoms, a finding that is sensible in a cohort of female patients with more exacerbations, airway hyperresponsiveness and SAD,” Muiser said.

However the men in the partner had more serious severe airflow obstruction and more noteworthy commonness of persistent airflow limitation (126 vs; 122; P < .001).

“This features the way that the interchange between genuine boundaries of asthma, abstract insight of side effects, and clinical results is exceptionally perplexing,” Muiser said.

As a result, personalized asthma treatment that takes into account sex is important, according to Muiser.

She stated, “We believe our findings highlight that a different approach to treatment of female asthma patients may be warranted to achieve symptom control.”

“Further research is necessary to unravel the differences between male and female asthma patients, ideally leading to evidence-based personalized treatment of asthma patients that takes sex into account,” she concluded.