Risk factors and overlap between asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

摘要

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are both defined by the presence of airflow obstruction, but they present distinguishing differences in terms of both risk factors and clinical phenotypes. The present study analyzes the risk factor for chronic obstructive diseases and asthma and it also made the discriminative analysis of clinic and functional factors which are significant for diagnosis, 278 patients aged over 18 presenting chronic respiratory symptoms were used. The average age of asthmatic patients was smaller compared to that of patients with COPD (46.23 vs. 55.10 vs. 63.59 (p＜0.0001), the smoking habit presented a raised frequency in COPD patients compared to asthmatics (71% vs. 20%). The professional risk did not influence the diagnosis, even if it was present in 25% of the patients (p=0.217 NS). Analyzing, within the group, the criteria that influence the way a diagnosis is established, based on anamnesis data, previous medical documents, clinical examination and functional respiratory tests, the factors that proved being statistically significant were: age, smoker status (p=0.000), atopy (p=0.001) and the presence of the obstruction reversibility (p=0.016). COPD and asthma share common features that sometimes, in clinical practice, make it very difficult to differentiate them.