To examine the nature of asthma in the elderly, we compared older (group 1: 65 years or older, n = 50) with younger patients (group 2: <40 years, n = 99) and to determine the influence of long-standing disease, elderly asthmatics with early onset (group A: onset before 40, n = 22) were compared with patients developing symptoms later in their lives (group B: onset after 40, n = 22). Blood eosinophilia and IgE value >/=100 IU/l were more frequent in younger patients. Short symptom-free periods were more frequent among older asthmatics (78.5 vs. 45.4%, p < 0.001). Only 31.2% of older patients had only mild symptoms. Requirement of systemic steroids was higher in the elderly population. The worst FEV1 was lower in older patients (54.4 +/- 17.3 vs. 71.8 +/- 18.5%, p

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The APS Journal Legacy Content is the corpus of 100 years of historical scientific research from the American Physiological Society research journals. This package goes back to the first issue of each of the APS journals including the American Journal of Physiology, first published in 1898. The full text scanned images of the printed pages are easily searchable. Downloads quickly in PDF format.

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