"We don't want you to wait until you have symptoms. We want to discover your condition before yo have symptoms, so we can change the course of the disease and improve your quality of life." People suffering from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often experience similar symptoms, such as shortness of breath, but the cause and treatment of these two airway diseases vary. Asthma occurs in about 8 percent of the adult population in the U.S. and in 7 percent of children. ...