Common lung condition may also be a sign of three other significant illnesses

A doctor-led study has found that people living with the most common chronic lung issue may actually be suffering from a number of other conditions that go unnoticed and under-diagnosed.

Roughly one in 10 of the 28 million Americans living with asthma will develop serious symptoms that are hard to control even with traditional treatments, including extreme bouts of coughing and shortness of breath.

The clinicians from the European Respiratory Society pored through the health records of more than 2700 asthma patients across 11 countries to examine how many of them were also suffering with another serious illness.

They found in their study, published in The Lancet Regional Health, that almost every single one of these hard-to-treat asthma sufferers were living with at least one other major health problem. Most were suffering from three serious medical issues.

Tens of millions of Americans live with asthma (Getty Images)

This surprising signal in the data has led the team to call for a 'deeper understanding of patterns' of ill health in these asthma patients, whose underlying symptoms broadly aligned with three major illnesses.

If doctors are able to understand the complicated patterns of health issues that people with asthma go through, the clinicians hope that they will be able to better target treatments for these resistant asthma cases.

The first illness that many of these 2700 patients were found to also be living with osteoporosis, a condition where your bones weaken and become brittle, combined with serious weight gain from steroid treatments for their asthma.

The second major group of symptoms that the data showed many people with hard-to-treat asthma suffering from were common allergic or inflammation reactions like eczema, hay fever, and rhinitis.

Oral steroids were linked to many of the issues experienced by asthma sufferers in the study (Getty Images)

The third type of illness commonly experienced by people analyzed in the study was chronic sinusitis and nasal polyps, which can cause continued nasal inflammation for months on end. Which can be particularly difficult for asthma sufferers.

Ramesh Kurukulaaratchy, professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Southampton and study co-author, said: “The patterns we found were linked to how well asthma was controlled, how often attacks happened and the treatments needed.

“Better understanding these patterns will help us look beyond asthma alone and improve the care for people living with severe asthma.”

Importantly, they found that many of these hard-to-treat patients were suffering from side-effects related to their oral steroid use, such as weight gain and bone density loss.

This has led them to argue for a sea change in how medics treat chronic asthma, with the study authors saying we 'need to eradicate oral steroid dependency in severe asthma management.'

Joint first author Dr Anna Freeman , Respiratory Consultant at University Hospital Southampton, said: "People with severe asthma often live with a heavy burden of other conditions but, until now, we didn’t fully understand how they were linked.

“With our results, we can improve the quality of life for millions of people across Europe who currently struggle to keep their severe asthma under control.”