Paper explores variations in asthma mortality, hospital admissions and prevalence by socioeconomic status and region in England
Variations across England
The UK has some of the highest asthma mortality rates in the world amongst high-income countries in younger age groups, including the highest asthma admission rates in Europe and the highest rates of asthma symptoms in children globally.
In England, asthma mortality, emergency admissions and prevalence have decreased over recent decades. However, there are still significant socio-economic status and regional variations for these outcomes, which have been explored in a study published today in Thorax.
Age, socio-economic status and region as factors
Led by Dr Ramyani Gupta - Senior Research Fellow at St. George's, University of London - the study was carried out alongside leading asthma researchers at the University of London, the University of Edinburgh, and the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research. The researchers' findings highlight that amongst younger people (ages 5–34) asthma mortality rates are falling in the poorest parts of the population compared with the wealthiest. However, this pattern was reversed with an older demographic (ages 45–74) in the poorest areas. 45-74 year-olds were found to have a 37% higher asthma mortality rate than people in the most affluent areas, whilst people aged over 75 years old in the most deprived regions had a 30% higher death rate than people in the richest areas.
Lead author Ramyani Gupta said:
"Large differences remain in asthma prevalence, admissions and mortality by deprivation and region in England. Most outcomes are worse in the least compared to most affluent areas (admissions 3x higher) whereas mortality in 5-44 years appears less common."
The authors stated that the previously undocumented inverse relation between deprivation and mortality in the young now requires further investigation.
Links
Link to co-author Mome Mukherjee discussing the findings on BBC Radio Scotland (from 1:18:33 onwards)