Asthma in Children and Adults—What Are the Differences and What Can They Tell us About Asthma?

Abstract

Asthma varies considerably across the life course. Childhood asthma is known for its overall high prevalence with a male predominance prior to puberty, common remission, and rare mortality. Adult asthma is known for its female predominance, uncommon remission, and unusual mortality. Both childhood and adult asthma have variable presentations, which are described herein. Childhood asthma severity is associated with duration of asthma symptoms, medication use, lung function, low socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic minorities, and a neutrophilic phenotype. Adult asthma severity is associated with increased IgE, elevated FeNO, eosinophilia, obesity, smoking, and low socioeconomic status. Adult onset disease is associated with more respiratory symptoms and asthma medication use despite higher prebronchodilator FEV1/FVC. There is less quiescent disease in adult onset asthma and it appears to be less stable than childhood-onset disease with more relapses and less remissions.

Six-Year Follow-up of a Trial of Antenatal Vitamin D for Asthma Reduction

“…Asthma in early childhood differs from asthma in later childhood or adulthood. 16 Assessments of wheezing phenotypes in several cohorts have shown that some children may wheeze early in life and not later, whereas others may have either persistent wheeze or late-onset wheeze. 17 Thus, children who wheeze in early childhood may have remission of their symptoms by the time they reach school age.…”

Adjuvant treatment with Xiaoqinglong formula for bronchial asthma

“…The first one was divided into children and adults, considering that the incidence of adult asthma is more unstable, the recurrence rate is higher and the remission rate is lower than that of childhood asthma. [13] Another subgroup was classified according to the clinical stage of asthma. On acute attack of asthma, treatment should focus on rapid relief of symptoms.…”

Adults with current asthma but not former asthma have higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a population-based prospective cohort study

“…Previous study showed that patients current asthma had a significant elevated C-reactive protein concentration than those with former asthma or never asthma, but there was not significant difference in C-reactive protein concentration among those with former asthma and non-asthma which supported our finding that current asthma not former asthma was associated with increased CVD, chronic lower respiratory diseases and all-cause mortality 26 . Asthma was such a heterogenous disease, adult-onset and childhood-onset asthma appeared to run a different course and had different characteristics 33 . Childhood-onset asthma was mild and remission was common 33 .…”