Asthma -- a disease which affects about 10 to 15 million Americans and kills nearly 2,500 every year -- is known mostly as a childhood disease. But it affects every age group and is prevelent among college students.

"You can develop it all through your life, said Dr. David Garrison, a physician at the University's Ritenour Health Center. "We see a lot of students who thought they've had bronchitis all of their lives," he said.

Dr. Diane E. Schuller, director of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Pulmonary Diseases at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, spoke on campus last week to an audience of about 120 people affected by asthma. The seminar was sponsored by the American Lung Association and Allen and Hanburys, a pharmaceutical firm.

"Asthma is serious. It really is and people should begin to see it as a potentially fatal disease," Schuller said.

Asthma is an illness characterized by spasms of the muscles surrounding the bronchial tubes, swelling of the tissue lining the tubes and production of excess mucus which blocks air flow.

Asthmatics also have a special sensitivity that causes their lungs to react far more than they should to stimuli.

Symptoms include chest tightness, repeated coughing, wheezing and sometimes headaches, dizziness and nausea.

Though doctors know heredity plays a role, it is not known if a specific gene or combination of genes is responsible.

"There is a hereditary factor that has yet to be identified," Schuller said.

Usually, people who are sensitive to other things later develop asthma, Garrison said.

"Seventy to 80 percent of children who have allergies have asthma," Schuller said, "and 35 to 50 percent of patients with allergic rhinitis (hay fever) will eventually develop signs of asthma."

Though it is difficult to identify the origin of asthma, the stimuli that trigger an attack can be identified. The specific trigger or combination of triggers is different for each person.

"It is rare that you have one single factor, but a combination of things" that trigger an attack, Schuller said.

Triggers include dust, feathers, pet dander and smoke from tobacco, wood or coal burners, as well as certain foods and food additives, particularly bisulfites. Strong emotions and sudden weather changes, such as barometric pressure and humidity, sometimes trigger an attack.

Patty Tarbay, 23, of Phillipsburg, who developed asthma eight years ago, said that smoke and weather changes trigger her asthma.

"An attack is scary. I can't breathe and I start to cough and wheeze," she said.

Lauri Perman, mediator of the seminar and mother of a 3-year-old with asthma, became involved with the Lung Association through a family seminar. Perman's son was diagnosed with asthma one-and-a-half years ago.

Previously it was thought that asthma was a side effect of psychological disturbance because people having asthma attacks would have anxiety attacks also.

"The people were scared because they couldn't breathe. The doctors thought that the asthma was caused by anxiety and would just tell them to calm down, when actually the asthma was causing the anxiety," Schuller said.