Table 1.
Asthma prevalence and associated symptoms.
| Items | Total |
Male |
Female |
P-value |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percentage | (95% CI) | Number | Percentage | Number | Percentage | (male vs. female) | |
| Total | 3474 | 100% | 1762b | 1601b | ||||
| Asthma symptoms in the past 12 months | ||||||||
| Wheezing, current | 321 | 9.2% | (8.2%–10.2%) | 172 | 9.8% | 135 | 8.4% | 0.16 |
| Wheezing attacks | 0.02 | |||||||
| 1 to 3 | 227 | 6.5% | (5.7%–7.3%) | 112 | 6.4% | 107 | 6.7% | |
| 4 to 12 | 62 | 1.8% | (1.4%–2.2%) | 43 | 2.4% | 18 | 1.1% | |
| More than 12 | 21 | 0.6% | (0.3%–0.9%) | 13 | 0.7% | 8 | 0.5% | |
| Wheezing that disturbed sleep | 0.51 | |||||||
| <1 per week | 79 | 2.3% | (1.8%–2.8%) | 39 | 2.2% | 34 | 2.1% | |
| ≥1 per week | 16 | 0.5% | (0.3%–0.7%) | 10 | 0.6% | 6 | 0.4% | |
| Severe wheezing that limited speech | 74 | 2.1% | (1.6%–2.6%) | 49 | 2.8% | 24 | 1.5% | 0.01 |
| Severe asthma symptomsa | 115 | 3.3% | (2.7%–3.9%) | 94 | 5.3% | 47 | 2.9% | <0.01 |
| Asthma ever | 494 | 14.2% | (13.0%–15.4%) | 284 | 16.1% | 195 | 12.2% | <0.01 |
| Asthma diagnosed by physicians | 431 | 12.4% | (11.3%–13.5%) | 253 | 14.4% | 164 | 10.2% | <0.01 |
| Exercise-induced wheezing | 870 | 25.0% | (23.6%–26.4%) | 477 | 27.1% | 364 | 22.7% | <0.01 |
| Nocturnal cough | 963 | 27.7% | (26.2%–29.2%) | 470 | 26.7% | 462 | 28.9% | 0.15 |
a
Severe asthma symptoms definition: cases with current wheezing have one or more of the following symptoms: (1) four or more attacks of wheezing; (2) woken by wheezing on one or more nights per week or; (3) wheezing severe enough to limit speech to only one or two words at a time, between breaths.
b
111 students didn't provide their gender in the questionnaires