Prevalence of asthma symptoms and risk factors in adolescents

Abstract

Introduction: Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways, which is increasing its prevalence among teenagers recently. The trigger-related factors are numerous, including environmental factors, genetic, food among others. Objective: Investigate the prevalence of asthma symptoms and possible risk factors in adolescents. Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative study conducted in 104 adolescents aged between 13 to 14 years old of both sexes from four educational institutions: three private and one public. Participants answered two questionnaires: one on risk factors for allergic diseases (EISL) and the other on asthma symptoms (ISAAC asthma module). Results: 104 adolescents answered the questionnaire: 54.8% girls and 45.2% boys. Male subjects had the most active asthma (64%) than female (20%) (p = 0.01) and also had more physician-diagnosed asthma (34.4%) than girls (6.1%) (p = 0.04), more wheezing after exercise (34.4%; 12.1%) (p = 0.03). Regarding the association between the symptoms and the risk factors we observed a statistically significant relationship between the presence of wheezing and hospitalization for public schools girls (p = 0.05). Conclusion: There is a higher prevalence of asthma symptoms in males than in females unlike other studies was observed.