Healthcare providers should watch more carefully for asthma in seniors, and older adults need to adopt healthier lifestyles to avoid developing the condition.

Sameer Mathur, MD, PhD, associate professor, Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, was interviewed by Healthline News for an article about asthma in older adults. 

“It is more likely that it is now being recognized more so than in the past, especially since pulmonary and allergy/asthma physicians have been trying to get this message across,” said Dr. Mathur. 

“We find that some patients with childhood asthma go into remission, but likely have residual lung changes, and manifest asthma symptoms when they get older,” he added. 

“There is also a group of patients that develops the onset of asthma when they are older.” 

The end result is under-diagnosis and under-treatment of asthma in older adults due to diagnostic focus on other, more acutely life-threatening causes of shortness of breath, he explained.

Resources:

• "Asthma in Older Adults Is Often Misdiagnosed and Undertreated," Healthline News, September 7, 2017