Abstract
Sex-related differences in asthma prevalence are well established and change through the reproductive phases of life. As children, boys have increased prevalence of asthma compared to girls. However, as adults, women have increased prevalence of asthma compared to men. Many factors, including genetics, environment, immunological responses, and sex hormones, affect the sex disparity associated with the development and control of asthma and other allergic diseases. Fluctuations of hormones during puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause, alter asthma symptoms and severity. In this article, we review clinical and epidemiological studies that examined the sex disparity in asthma and other allergic diseases as well as the role of sex hormones on asthma pathogenesis.
Highlights
There is a sexual dimorphism in asthma and allergic disease that changes through life
We primarily focused on the sex differences and sex hormone regulation in asthma pathogenesis in the clinical and epidemiological literature organized by maternal factors, childhood asthma, and asthma after puberty (Table 1)
- Longitudinal study, questionnaire based data collected during pregnancy, 3 months, 1 yr and yearly thereafter (PIAMA data)
Summary
There is a sexual dimorphism in asthma and allergic disease that changes through life. At the end of the review, there will be a brief overview of the sex disparity in other allergic diseases Maternal factors, such as smoking, antibiotic or corticosteroid use, and prenatal stress, are associated with increased development of asthma or wheeze in children [33,34,35,36]. Sex was not addressed as a variable in some breastfeeding studies [37, 38], or was listed as a co-variate that did not impact the findings in other studies [45,46,47,48,49] Combined, these studies suggest that prenatal stress and potentially maternal asthma control may differentially affect male and female offspring in childhood development of asthma/wheeze.
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