Abstract
Asthma is associated with many comorbidities, but the magnitude of the association has not been clearly defined. We aimed to examine the relationship between asthma and comorbidities using information obtained from the Health Search Database (HSD) owned by the Italian College of General Practitioners (SIMG).
We conducted a population-based retrospective study using information obtained from the HSD. The software system used codes all the diagnostic records using the 9th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
Apparently, asthma was weakly associated with cardiovascular and hypertensive diseases. Intriguingly, the OR of acute or old myocardial infarction was 0.84 (95% CI 0.77–0.91). Asthma was also weakly associated with depression, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemia, osteoporosis, and rhinosinusitis. On the contrary, it was strongly associated with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and, mainly, allergic rhinitis (AR). Age did not influence the association of asthma with comorbidities whereas gender had a different impact according to the specific comorbidity.
Our results indicate that asthma is weakly associated with many comorbidities, whereas its association with AR or GERD is stronger.
- ERS
