Introduction: Sense of control is an important concept for coping and management of symptoms were pharmacological treatments are lacking, but it is still unknown if, and how sense of control is associated to breathlessness.

Aims and objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate how sense of control relates to the presence of breathlessness in the middle-aged general population.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional population-based study of men and women aged 50 to 64 years in the Swedish general population. Breathlessness was defined as modified medical research council breathlessness scale ?2. Sense of control was self-reported with five items (0 ? 4) describing sense of control over the aspects: life events, future, treated by others, changes in life, and life improvements. The associations between low sense of control of different aspects (score ?1) and presence of breathlessness were evaluated by logistic regression, unadjusted and adjusted for common confounders.

Results: A total of 14,801 women (52%) and 13,929 men were included in the present analysis (4% breathless). Unadjusted, all aspects of sense of control were associated with breathlessness (odds ratio; 95% confidence interval): life events (2.52; 2.23 ? 2.86), future (2.90; 2.43 ? 3.44), treated by others (3.37; 2.90 ? 3.90), changes in life (2.64; 2.34 ? 2.98) and life improvements (5.46; 4.63 ? 6.40). Significant associations remained after adjusting for confounding variables.

Conclusions: Sense of control can be important to consider for non-pharmacological interventions for breathlessness.