Epidemiology
•Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world with an estimate that nearly 300 million people in the world are currently affected. It is estimated that there may be an additional 100 million individuals with asthma by 2025.
•The number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost due to asthma worldwide has been estimated to be currently about 15 million. Worldwide, asthma accounts for around 1% of all DALY’s lost, which reflects the high prevalence and severity of asthma.
•It is estimated that asthma accounts for about 1 in every 250 deaths worldwide.
•In the United States, asthma prevalence has increased from 7.3% in 2001 to 8.4% in 2010, when 25.7 million people had asthma. Children aged 0-17 years had higher asthma prevalence (9.5%) than adults aged 18 and over (7.7%) for the period 2008-2010 and females had higher asthma prevalence than males, 9.2% compared with 7.0%.
•The global prevalence rates of doctor diagnosed asthma, clinical/treated asthma and wheezing in adults vary amongst different countries. In current years, Australia reported the highest rate of doctor-diagnosed, clinical treated asthma; while smokers accounted