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Cough
Self-reported symptoms of chronic cough and breathlessness in working-age men in the city of Izhevsk, Russia: associations with cardiovascular disease risk factors and comorbidities
  1. Sarah Cook1,
  2. Jennifer K Quint1,2,
  3. Maxim Vasiljev3 and
  4. David A Leon1,4
  1. 1Department of Non Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Respiratory Epidemiology, Occupational Medicine and Public Health, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK
  3. 3Izhevsk State Medical Academy, Izhevsk, Russia
  4. 4Arctic University of Norway, UiT, Tromsø, Norway
  1. Correspondence to Dr Sarah Cook; sarah.cook{at}lshtm.ac.uk

Abstract

Introduction Very little is known about the prevalence of respiratory symptoms or their associations with other health conditions in Russia.

Methods Between 2008 and 2010, a sample of 983 men resident in Izhevsk, Russia, took part in a cross-sectional survey. Presence of respiratory symptoms was determined from self-report of chronic productive cough and breathlessness assessed using the British Medical Research Council (MRC) breathlessness scale. Self-reported physical and mental health were measured using the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12). Hypertension was assessed from mean blood pressure measured at the health check and/or self-reported use of antihypertensive medication. Other comorbidities were assessed from self-report. Logistic regression models were fitted assessing the association between respiratory symptoms and comorbidities. Linear regression models were fitted to investigate the association between respiratory symptoms and self-reported health scores. All models were adjusted for age, education and smoking status.

Results The age-standardised prevalence of cough and breathlessness was 20.9% (prevalence with breathlessness MRC grade 3 or above 3.7%). The majority of men with respiratory symptoms (87.3%) were current smokers. Cough and breathlessness were associated with substantially worse self-reported physical and mental health (test for trend with severity of breathlessness p<0.001). Those with chronic cough and grade 3 or above breathlessness had higher odds of having hypertension (OR 3.03; 95% CI 1.36 to 6.74), diabetes (OR 10.55; 95% CI 2.69 to 41.37), angina pectoris (OR 7.54; 95% CI 3.61 to 15.73), previous myocardial infarction (OR 7.61; 95% CI 2.10 to 27.4) and previous stroke (OR 6.61; 95% CI 1.75 to 23.34) compared with those without respiratory symptoms.

Conclusions The prevalence of respiratory symptoms was high. Strong associations were found between respiratory symptoms and cardiovascular comorbidities. These are of particular importance given the extremely high level of cardiovascular disease mortality in Russia.

  • Clinical Epidemiology
  • COPD epidemiology

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjresp-2015-000104

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