Triggers in adult asthma: are patients aware of triggers and doing right?
BACKGROUND
As triggers have a potential to induce asthma exacerbations, awareness of the patients to individual triggers as well as protective measures might be helpful to prevent asthma attacks. Though allergens and allergen avoidance have been studied extensively, there are only few studies on non-allergic triggers and their avoidance for adult patients with asthma. In this study, we wanted to investigate asthma triggers and compliance to the preventive measures in an adult population.


METHODS
One hundred and thirty one adult asthma patients were enrolled into the study. A face to face interview was done by using a questionnaire including individual asthma triggers, prevention measures against major modifiable triggers and knowledge sources of the cases.


RESULTS
Regardless of asthma severity, 59.5 % of the subjects reported to be triggered by more than 10 factors. The most common triggers were air pollutants (89.3 %) and weather changes (81.7 %). Severe group was more frequently affected by medications, emotional stress, weather changes and indoor pollutants than other severity groups (p=0.017, 0.014, 0.049 and 0.018, respectively) whereas stress was reported more frequently by females than males. Prevention measures were insufficient regarding some major triggers.


CONCLUSIONS
Adult patients are vulnerable to several triggers regardless from underlying severity of the illness. Insufficient compliance to the major preventive measures indicates that new strategies are needed to prevent asthma attacks caused by modifiable triggers.
Göksel
Ozlem
O
Division of Allergy, Department of Chest Diseases, Ankara University School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey. goksel.ozlem@gmail.com
Celik
Gülfem E
GE
Erkekol
Ferda Oner
FO
Güllü
Emine
E
Mungan
Dilşad
D
Misirligil
Zeynep
Z
D000328:Adult; D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000009:adverse effects; D001249:Asthma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D018450:Disease Progression; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011379:Prognosis; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
D000393:Air Pollutants