Millions of adolescents in Africa could be living unknowingly with asthma as cases go undiagnosed, researchers find.

Millions of adolescents across Africa may unknowingly be battling asthma because they have not received a diagnosis from a clinician and, therefore, are not receiving the necessary treatments, a new study has found.

Published last week in the research journal The Lancet, the study’s findings are critical for a continent that has produced little data about the scale of asthma despite the condition being one of the most common causes of chronic respiratory deaths on the continent

Asthma, which affects the lungs and causes difficulties in breathing, often starts in childhood or adolescence. It is a condition that affects many adolescents worldwide with an estimated 76 million young adults suffering from it in 2019, according to the National Library of Medicine, part of the United States government

What did the study find?

A team of researchers led by investigators at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) discovered that 12 percent of adolescents in six African countries had severe asthma symptoms but the vast majority of them – 80 percent – had not been diagnosed by a health expert.

The climate crisis is causing more asthma cases as well, researchers say. Increased exposure of vulnerable children to dust and wildfires that are intensifying globally because of global warming could occur, according to experts

How prevalent is asthma in Africa?

Total asthma cases on the continent went from 94 million in 2000 to 119 million in 2010, according to the 2013 study.

Adolescents make up about 14 percent of the asthma cases in Africa although the numbers vary widely: In Nigeria, children make up about 13 percent of the cases while in South Africa, they make up about 20 percent.

How is asthma treated?

Asthma is ideally managed via two approaches: short-acting inhalers or tablets that expand the air passageways and allow more air into the lungs during an attack. There are also longer-term therapies that can also come in the form of preventive inhalers or tablets and that are used daily to prevent attacks from occurring.

In most African countries, however, asthma cases are treated on a crisis-by-crisis basis rather than being controlled over the longer term, researchers said.