Trends in prevalence of asthma and allergy in Finnish young men: nationwide study, 1966-2003

Recent reports on time trends in atopic disease suggest that the prevalence of asthma and allergic rhinitis has levelled off in some European countries after several decades of increasing. 1 2 We reported earlier that the prevalence of asthma in young Finnish men remained stable from 1926 to 1961 but started to rise steeply during the 1960s; a sixfold, virtually linear increase in asthma prevalence was found between 1966 and 1989, in parallel with increases in indicators of disabling asthma (on the basis of the percentage of men exempted from military service at call-up owing to asthma and of men discharged during service as a result of asthma). 3 We examined whether similar trends have continued during the subsequent 13 years (1990-2003). As data on current trends in prevalence of allergic conditions are scarce, we also examined the trends in prevalence of allergic rhinitis and eczema from 1966 to 2003 among these young men.