Sex and age characteristics of thunderstorm asthma emergency department visits

Asthma is a disease of the respiratory tract characterized by chronic effects coupled with severe acute attacks (Harver and Kotses, 2010). It is a complex multifactorial disease with multiple definitions and risk factors that pose challenges in epidemiological description (Van Wonderen et al., 2010). Symptoms may include shortness of breath, coughing, and wheezing (Harver and Kotses, 2010). Asthma is associated with allergic (Wenzel, 2012) subtypes and non-allergic subtypes linked to individual factors, such as race, genetics, (Ober and Yao, 2011) diet, or obesity, (Guilleminault et al., 2017; Ford, 2005; Peters et al., 2018) and differential impacts associated with socioedemographics, such as ethnicity (Rona, 2000) and poverty (Nunes et al., 2017). Environmental exposures that exacerbate asthma incidence and severity include mold and cockroach allergens, (Gautier and Charpin, 2017) in addition to air pollution and allergy to pollen (Molnár et al., 2021), (P.E. Taylor et al., 2007).