The Different Kinds of Asthma Phenotype
This week allow me to share with you my knowledge about asthma which is a disease covered by my specialty as a pulmonologist.
Asthma is a common respiratory disease. It is characterized by recurrent cough, shortness of breath and wheezing sound during expiration.
Allergic asthma is the most common form of asthma phenotype. It often commences at birth.
It is associated with history of allergic disease such as eczema and allergic rhinitis.
A patient with allergic asthma usually has several allergies to food and drugs.
The good news is that a patient with this kind of asthma responds well to treatment.
Let’s go to adult-onset asthma, which is a condition that occurs for the first time during one’s adult life.
Patients with adult-onset asthma tend to have no history of allergy.
This asthma phenotype is most common among women than men.
This condition is relatively refractory to corticosteroid treatment and often requires higher dose of anti-asthma medications.
Another phenotype of asthma is the cough-variant asthma where the main symptom is non-productive cough or dry cough.
People with cough-variant asthma will not experience the typical symptoms of asthma like shortness of breath and wheezing.
More often, laboratory and physical examinations are normal making it difficult to diagnose.
Fortunately, this kind of asthma responds well to anti-asthma medications.
Patients with work-related asthma develop asthma (shortness of breath, cough and wheezing) as a result from workplace triggers.
Work-asthma symptoms usually develop during work days and the symptoms improve during weekends and holidays (when one is away from work).
Work-related asthma can occur in any work type, but it is most common among farmers, painters, nurses, animal breeder, hairdressers and woodworkers.
The treatment includes anti-asthma medications, identification and avoidance of triggers at the work place.
There are many more different kinds of asthma phenotype and the ones mentioned above are the most common.
Any asthma phenotype is a risk factor for severe Coronavirus disease (Covid), therefore vaccination for covid19 is highly encouraged among this population.