Asthma’s Course Differs by Gender

A new study says that boys may be more likely to have childhood asthma than girls, but they are also more likely to grow out of it.

The report, published in the second August issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that boys also have fewer asthma occurrences in the post-pubertal years.

After an average of 8.6 years, boys became increasingly tolerant over time to larger and larger doses of methacholine, which provokes airway constriction, suggesting a possible decrease in disease severity. By age 16, it took more than twice as much methacholine to provoke a 20 percent constriction in the boys’ airway on average as it did with the girls’.