Asthma in relation to personality traits, life satisfaction, and stress: aprospective study among 11 000 adults

Background: While patients' personality has been thought to affect allergic diseases, the association of asthma and psychological factors is still deb ated. Stress is believed to predispose to asthma, but no clear evidence of causality has been found. We have studied the role of psychological factors in prevalent as well as in incident asthma cases among the adult populatio n. Methods: A total of 11540 adults initially aged 18-45 years responded to th ree questionnaires in 1975, 1981, and 1990, respectively. The association o f psychological factors (including extroversion and neuroticism scales, sub jective stress, and life satisfaction) and prevalent asthma was studied, as well as the predisposing effect of these factors on the risk of adult onse t asthma. Logistic regression was used for risk calculations. Results: Low life satisfaction was associated with asthma prevalence (age- and sex-adjusted OR = 2.27: 1.04-4.93 for prevalent asthma among those with low fife satisfaction compared to those with high life satisfaction), as w as neuroticism (age and sex-adjusted OR = 1.78:1.12-2.84 for those with a h igh neuroticism score compared to those with a low score). A high extrovers ion score was significantly associated with the risk of adult onset asthma among women (age-adjusted OR = 2.72: 1.44-5.12 for new asthma among those w ith high score compared to those with a low extroversion score). Conclusions: No specific personality type is associated with adult onset as thma, but there is a significant sex difference in the effect of psychologi cal factors in asthma risk. A high extroversion score is a strong predictor of incident asthma among women. Prevalent asthma decreases life satisfacti on and is associated with a high neuroticism score.