WEDNESDAY, Jan. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Just over 8 percent of
Americans have asthma, according to the latest estimates from the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That finding is gleaned from an overall portrait of current
asthma trends, as outlined in a National Center for Health
Statistics 2011 report entitled "Asthma Prevalence, Health Care
Use, and Mortality: United States, 2005-2009."
A study team led by Dr. Lara J. Akinbami, from the Office of
Analysis and Epidemiology at the National Center for Health
Statistics, which is part of the CDC, composed their current asthma
snapshot with data obtained from the National Health Interview
Survey, the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the National
Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the National Hospital
Discharge Survey, and the National Vital Statistics System.
Crunching the numbers, the authors found that 24.6 million
Americans (or 8.2 percent) have asthma.
However, the percentage of people with asthma was found to be
higher than the national average among specific groups, including
women, children, non-Hispanic blacks and Puerto Ricans.
People living below the poverty line, as well as residents of
both the Northeast and the Midwest, were also found to have
higher-than-average rates of asthma.
The authors noted that, in 2007, emergency rooms across the
United States saw 1.75 million asthma-related visits and 456,000
asthma-related hospitalizations.
By 2008, asthma patients were missing 14.2 million days of work
each year, as well as 10.5 million school days, the report
stated.
Dr. Jonathan Field, director of the allergy and asthma clinic at
New York University School of Medicine/Bellevue Medical Center in
New York City, cautioned that the reported trends might reflect a
medical community reporting bias.
"The issue is that people living in poorer communities are more likely to get care for their asthma in emergency rooms and academic centers, whereas wealthier individuals often get seen in a private practice setting, which don't always report their figures as readily," he explained.
"But unfortunately there are also a lot of things in poorer communities and inner cities, where you see larger minority populations, that make asthma more of an issue," Field acknowledged. "Some of the trends could have a genetic component. But socioeconomics certainly plays a role as, for example, regards access to care and the ability or inability to afford medicines. So there are certainly a lot of things at work here."
More information
For more on asthma prevalence, visit the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.