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Rebecca Voelker
JAMA contributor

JAMA. 1998;280:873.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The prevalence of asthma in India's largest city may be greater than physicians' diagnoses indicate.

As part of the multicenter European Community Respiratory Health Survey, researchers in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) interviewed 2313 adults about asthma symptoms, diagnoses, and medications they may have taken in the previous 12 months. In a second phase of the study, the researchers gathered more detailed information—smoking histories, housing characteristics, serum IgE levels, and results from skin tests with nine allergens, spirometry, and methacholine challenge tests—from a subset of 20% of the initial group.

In their analysis of the findings to determine the prevalence of asthma in Mumbai, the researchers used a disease definition that included asymptomatic bronchial hyperreactivity. According to the broader definition, the asthma prevalence was 17%, compared with 3.5% by physician diagnosis. Of all the factors studied, positive skin tests for house dust mites, family history of asthma, and total IgE . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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