Yes, asthma is over-diagnosed, but it is still a matter of life or death

Specialists say handing inhalers out like sweets hides the fact the disease still kills three people a day in Britain

Asthma is being over-diagnosed and trivialised, say two leading specialists. And this is a major problem, because they say doling inhalers out like Smarties means that the small subset of people who have potentially life-threatening asthma may be missing out on the attention and care they need.

An Australian study of 108 children with a cough over three weeks, half of whom had been labelled as “asthmatic”, found that after extensive investigation only 5% did have asthma. Most had a bacterial infection that would probably have improved with antibiotics.

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from Health & wellbeing | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1SUoDqb
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