MedWire News: Results from a study conducted in Latin America show significant gender differences in perception of dyspnea and health status among individuals with and without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Writing in the European Respiratory Journal, María Victorina López Varela (Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay) and team explain: “There is increasing evidence in selected COPD populations supporting gender differences in the clinical expression of COPD.”
But they add: “To our knowledge there is no information available regarding gender differences in the clinical expression of COPD from an unselected population-based sample.”
To address this, the researchers studied data from the PLATINO (Proyecto Latinoamericano de Investigación en Obstrucción Pulmonar) study on 5314 adults (3212 women) from five Latin-American cities.
All the participants underwent lung function tests and completed questionnaires on health status (Short form [SF]-12) and dyspnea (Medical Research Council [MRC] scale).
In total, 759 (362 females) individuals met criteria for a diagnosis of COPD, defined as a post-bronchodilation FEV1/forced vital capacity ratio of less than 0.70.
The researchers found that, overall, women reported more dyspnea and poorer health status than men. Specifically, 54% of women without COPD reported a dyspnea score of 2 or more compared with 35% of men without the condition, as did 63% of women and 44% of men with COPD.
Indeed, female gender was associated with a 1.6-fold increased risk for dyspnea among the whole population.
Furthermore, among individuals without COPD, 40% of women reported their general health status as “fair-poor” compared with 28% of men. Among those with COPD, the corresponding values were 41% and 34%.
The researchers also found that although the distribution of COPD severity was similar between genders, women who were currently smokers had more severe COPD than men who were current smokers.
López Varela and team conclude: “This study indicates that there are important gender differences in the impact of COPD. Independent of COPD status, women report more dyspnea and physical limitation, and worse general health status than do men.”
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