This study suggests that asthma occurrence is higher than MS
Hill E, Abboud H, Briggs FBS.Prevalence of asthma in multiple sclerosis: A United States population-based study.Mult Scler Relat Disord. 2018 Dec 12;28:69-74
BACKGROUND:Multiple sclerosis (MS) and asthma are complex multifactorial diseases which adversely impact daily functioning. However, the prevalence of asthma in those with MS is not clear. The objective of this study is to characterize the prevalence of asthma in those with MS, with considerations for age, gender, and race.
METHODS:We conducted a U.S. population-based, cross-sectional study of electronic health record information for 56.6 million Americans available in the IBM® Explorys EPM: Explore database. We evaluated the prevalence of asthma in MS (N = 141,880) and non-MS (N = 56,416,790) cohorts, stratifying by age, gender, and race (All, White Americans, and African Americans).
RESULTS:The prevalence of asthma was significantly greater among those with MS than the general population across age, gender, and racial subpopulations. Adjusting for age and gender, asthma was three times more common in MS. In the MS cohort, the prevalence of asthma had a U-shaped distribution with respect to age, with the greatest asthma prevalence among the young and the elderly (> 20% prevalence among those <30 or ≥80 years; prevalence range: 15 to 30%); this significantly differed from the fairly uniform distribution observed in the non-MS cohort (prevalence range: 4 to 9%). These patterns were relatively consistent when stratifying by gender and race.
CONCLUSION:Asthma is significantly more common in those with MS than in the general population - particularly in the young and elderly - irrespective of gender and race. The results add to the growing MS comorbidity literature, and emphasizes the need for comorbidity management as a part of comprehensive MS patient care.
ProfG will be interested in the issues on comorbidity and how we deal with them and but if asthma is more common with MS, what does this say about the immunologists of the 80s and 90s and the rest?
Their mantra was get rid of a Th1 disease and push things towards a regulatory Th2 response. We had paper after paper saying this was the mechanism of how you get rid of EAE...that was until Tregs came along at least.
Personally, I always though this was a crazy idea as you don't want a TH1 response or a TH2 response. They are both bad news.
Here we have a Th1 problem (MS) and they have more asthma (Th2) too, so Th1 and Th2 responses are both a problem, so were the EAEers wasting their time?
but if we look at the data, it says asthma is more common in the young and the old. How can that be? You lose it and gain it again, or some bad news for middle age asthmatics? I can't explain it can you?