Asthma could be worse in some ethnic groups, the report said

A University of Edinburgh team found south Asian patients were three times more likely and black people twice as likely to receive hospital treatment.

Researchers studied data on 22,350 people with asthma from 1981 to 2002.

The differences could be due to asthma severity, lack of awareness or poor access to primary health care.

It was also possible people from ethnic minority groups were more likely to attempt self-management of asthma, the report published in The Lancet said.

We, as health professionals, need to make services more accessible and there also needs to be education to make people aware of what having asthma means Dr Richard Russell Medical notes - asthma

The study, which looked at data from 13 other studies, also revealed black people were the most likely to be diagnosed with asthma.

Some 15% had asthma compared to 11% among the white population and 8% of south Asian people.

Report author Professor Aziz Sheikh said the findings "filled a major gap in knowledge about asthma in ethnic minorities in the UK".

He said the nature of asthma in ethnic minorities was complex and added: "This disparity between frequency of asthma and asthma-related use of health services needs careful study.

"Our findings prompt questions about whether ethnic minorities receive less preventative or more emergency treatment than their white counterparts.

"These questions need further and critical examination and research."

Needs

Asthma UK, which helped fund the study, said it believed the differences were because of "underlying problems" in accessing services in poor areas.

Katie Shepherd, care development manager at Asthma UK, said: "It supports our view that asthma care should be tailored to the needs of the individual.

"This study should encourage health professionals to provide more preventative care in communities with high rates of emergency admissions."

Dr Richard Russell, a hospital chest consultant and spokesman for the British Thoracic Society, said doctors had long suspected admission rates were higher for ethnic minorities but welcomed firm data on this.

He said he did not believe the differences could be accounted by people from ethnic minorities having more severe forms of asthma.

But he added: "People from ethnic minorities are not very good at accessing services because the services we provide are generic and some people from ethnic minorities perhaps have a poor understanding of English and find it hard. I think this is true for any specialism.

"People from ethnic minorities also have different ways of dealing with asthma.

"We, as health professionals, need to make services more accessible and there also needs to be education to make people aware of what having asthma means."