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Did you know that asthma can mimic other diseases or symptoms? Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that makes air passages (bronchial tubes) particularly irritant-sensitive. It is characterized by breathing difficulties, which range on a continuum from barely noticeable to extremely severe. The disorder has been increasing in frequency in recent years, and is especially noticeable as an increasing problem amongst children living in large cities. In North America, almost half of school children seem to carry "puffers" with them these days, and the incidence seems to be increasing each year.

Asthma is a highly ranked chronic health condition in adults in most western countries. It is also the leading chronic illness in children. Asthma has no cure. Fortunately, for most patients the symptoms can be managed so that they suffer only minimal and infrequent symptoms and can live an active life. However, there are a number of illnesses which can mimic asthma symptoms and often result in misdiagnosis.

One example of an illness that is commonly misdiagnosed as asthma is vocal cord dysfunction syndrome the symptoms of which can mimic an asthma attack. Usually the difficulty in making an asthma diagnosis is making it early enough. However, sometimes people who do truly have asthma as well, difficulty in breathing can result from abnormal movements of the voice box during breathing. This can so closely mimic a severe asthma attack that a proper diagnosis is made very hard. You can benefit from learning more about vocal cord dysfunction of you think you might be suffering from it instead of asthma.

However, if this condition is recognized, appropriate treatment is much easier to achieve. There are a number of other illnesses that can mimic asthma symptoms, though in comparison to asthma, these are all very rare, and they are also much rarer than vocal cord dysfunction. It is worth keeping this in mind if you are experiencing unexplained differences in your asthma reactions.