One in three adults who had recently been diagnosed with asthma did not appear to be asthmatic when evaluated with spirometry and bronchial challenge, reports MedPageToday.

About 44% of patients found not to have asthma had been diagnosed without the use of spirometry, bronchial challenge, or serial peak flow measurement, making it questionable whether they ever actually had asthma.

The study findings suggest that the common practice of diagnosing asthma in adults based on symptoms alone often leads to misdiagnosis, Shawn Aaron, MD, of Canada’s University of Ottawa, and colleagues wrote in the Jan. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association.

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