Doug Brugge, an associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, said a review of 479 asthma screening questionnaires from children and adults in Dorchester, Mass., suggests black adults who were born in the United States and living in Dorchester were three times as likely to be diagnosed with asthma as black adults in the community who were born outside the United States.

Brugge, however, warned that the results cannot be generalized to the U.S. population because it focused on a specific neighborhood in Boston.

"If future research confirms that the U.S.-born black population has a higher prevalence of asthma than the foreign-born black population, resources such as asthma screening and detection can be directed to populations or communities most in need," he said Monday in a news release.

The study is published online in the Journal of Asthma.

The Boston Globe said previous research has shown that foreign-born Asians and Hispanics appear less prone to asthma.