The impact of first occupation on the occurrence and worsening of asthma in young adults

Background: Asthma is a chronic and common condition of childhood and adolescence. The study objective was to examine if an existing asthma in different severity stages, is a risk factor for worsening as a function of the military occupation and service specifications. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included army recruits of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) between 1998-2006 for a 3 years follow up. They were divided according to their occupational categories to Maintenance Units (MU), Combat Units (CU), Administrative Units (AU) and Driving Units (DU). Results: The annual incidence rate of new onset asthma disease was 0.29%, lower than expected. The rate in MU, CU and DU was lower than in the AU (0.629, 0.503 and 0.543 respectively, p Conclusions: The low incidence of asthma may depend upon the reliability of the diagnostic criteria which are highly accurate in our study. The annual incidence for recurrence of childhood asthma was found similar to the incidence described in the literature. The high incidence of asthma in the AU compare to other occupational categories could be attributed to lower motivation and other possible risk factors such as atopic background, overexposure to air pollution, obesity and reduced performance of physical activity. Our findings support that medical categories policy of the IDF.