U.S. Asthma Still Climbing
Here’s more fuel for my Let’s Move fire, as reported at a recent AAAAI annual meeting: 7.85% of the population has asthma, and the rate has risen 0.5% every three years. In fact, Nevada is the only state seeing a decrease, but just barely. More details on several other states through the link. (ALA)
Lack of Maintenance Corticosteroids and Asthma Death
And even more fuel:
From that same meeting in New Orleans, a Milwaukee study was presented on asthma deaths outside the hospital setting between 2004 and 2008. In all 22 deaths, none of the asthma sufferers had been using maintenance steroid inhalers. (Like Flovent, for example) In fact, while a few had been using LABAs and/or other maintenance meds like Singulair, 20 of the 22 patients who died were basically relying on their quick-relief inhalers only. Substance abuse was a factor in a small number of the deaths.
Sooooo. . . . taking these two studies together, anyone still think the U.S. isn’t experiencing an asthma epidemic? Or that awareness and treatment information is getting to everyone it needs to?
Yeah, me neither.
Asthma Ups Depression Risk
You should read the whole article, which explains how the research discovered a link but can’t pinpoint the cause.
Just Look at These Photos of Massive Snow
Because after that list of downer links – seriously, is this week’s respiratory news section not the worst ever? – let’s take it into the weekend with a little winter frivolity, shall we?
It’s not a surprise to me if people with asthma who aren’t on inhaled steroids had fatal asthma attacks: In my experience, some doctors are reluctant to start/increase asthma medications, even if you’re obviously uncontrolled, and it can be hard to seek a second opinion.
I think some of it may be a side-effect of increased education about asthma: I knew a few people who were diagnosed within the past few years, but they’ve had symptoms of it all their lives and just assumed they were out of shape or that they were prone to catching colds or what have you. But thanks to shows like the early to mid-nineties “Rescue 911″ and various news segments, plus a concerted effort by asthma and lung education groups to raise public awareness is starting to make more people realize they may have a problem and need to be checked. I dont’ think that’s all of it, but I’m pretty sure it’s got a significant impact…
Off the topic a bit is another entry for your “asthma in the media” section whenever you do it: the PS3 video game “Heavy Rain” has an asthmatic character – amusingly enough, it’s the middle-aged PI that has brawls with street thugs! There’s some poor inhaler technique that irked me a bit in it, plus like just about every asthmatic I’ve seen in the media, he’s very poorly controlled, but it was still neat to see a character other than the weak and wimpy computer nerd be the asthmatic. Plus, his internal dialogue when he had symptoms was very much like mine (“[Curse phrase deleted to keep this family-friendly] asthma!”), so that was funny, too.
I’ve heard of that game! Seen a couple VERY short clips of it, too, but never played it, though, because we have a Wii only–how sad that a video game meant to increase awareness (I’m guessing) uses bad inhaler technique, too.
Actually, the game doesn’t really have anything to do with asthma, except that it has an asthmatic character: It’s a murder mystery. That’s part of why I liked it so much, in that they didn’t really make it a big deal. It’s just, “Oh, and he has asthma, which you as a player have to deal with on occasion. *shrug*” – and I liked that approach way more than some stuff I used to watch/read as a kid, where they made such a big freaking deal about the asthma and made it into this huge issue that everything revolves around (I’m sure AG can relate to getting aggravated when everyone tries to make a big fuss over something that’s just everyday living for you – what I really liked was that it was treated in a way that made it obvious it was just something the character dealt with – and that it -could- be a big deal if/when something went wrong, but it wasn’t the centre, or even a major subplot, in the story).