Sex difference in prescription of asthma drugs is smaller than previously found.

EDITOR—We were surprised to see the relation between people's sex and, in those with asthma, their likelihood of being prescribed oral steroids, as found by Sexton et al.1 We analysed a larger dataset, as they suggest. We included computerised 1996 RNZCGP data from a consulting population of 201 954 patients (90 214 men and 109 079 women; 2661 sex not recorded). The nature and reliability of the RNZCGP database are well established.2 3 The target patients were in the age band 20-54 years (42 264 men and 55 670 women). Patients were …