Characteristics at recruitment: mean age and prevalence of asthma and respiratory symptoms, smoking habits and socioeconomic group in the two cohorts by sex
| Cohort recruited in 1996# | Cohort recruited in 2006¶ | |||||||
| Women | Men | All | p-value+ | Women | Men | All | p-value+ | |
| Age mean (sd) | 44.8 (13.5) | 44.4 (13.2) | 44.6 (13.3) | 0.249 | 47.7(13.2) | 47.6 (13.1) | 47.7 (13.1) | 0.731 |
| Smoking habits % | ||||||||
| Smoker | 27.7 | 23.9 | 25.8 | <0.001 | 20.5 | 14.2 | 17.5 | <0.001 |
| Ex-smoker | 19.0 | 25.0 | 22.0 | 23.4 | 23.9 | 23.6 | ||
| Nonsmoker | 53.3 | 51.1 | 52.2 | 56.1 | 62.0 | 58.9 | ||
| Physician-diagnosed asthma % | 8.6 | 9.1 | 8.8 | 0.461 | 12.1 | 9.9 | 11.1 | 0.016 |
| Asthma medication % | 11.3 | 9.6 | 10.5 | 0.029 | 13.5 | 10.8 | 12.2 | 0.005 |
| Recurrent wheeze % | 13.2 | 12.2 | 12.7 | 0.274 | 11.1 | 11.7 | 11.4 | 0.584 |
| Attacks of shortness of breath % | 15.4 | 12.5 | 13.9 | 0.002 | 14.1 | 11.9 | 14.3 | 0.026 |
| Allergic rhino-conjunctivitis % | 24.7 | 22.2 | 23.4 | 0.029 | 27.4 | 22.8 | 25.2 | <0.001 |
| Family history of asthma % | 24.6 | 18.6 | 21.6 | <0.001 | 25.5 | 19.8 | 22.8 | <0.001 |
| Socioeconomic group % | ||||||||
| Professionals | 2.8 | 7.6 | 5.3 | <0.001 | 5.5 | 7.7 | 6.6 | <0.001 |
| Non-manual workers | 43.7 | 27.8 | 35.6 | 47.4 | 30.1 | 39.1 | ||
| Manual workers | 53.5 | 64.6 | 59.1 | 47.1 | 62.1 | 54.3 | ||
#: n=5709; ¶: n=4552; +: p-value for differences by sex, p-values in bold indicate statistical significance.