FILE - Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush looks into the audience during the Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House in Washington February 15, 2011.
Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush has been admitted to a hospital in the southwestern city of Houston, Texas.
A spokesman for the 90-year-old Bush said the former president was taken to Houston Methodist Hospital after experiencing shortness of breath.
The 41st U.S. president and father of former President George W. Bush was admitted to the same hospital in December 2012 for treatment of a bronchitis-related cough. He was released seven weeks later.
President Barack Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii, has been informed of the elder Bush's illness, the White House said in a statement. It said Obama and his wife Michelle "send their good wishes" to the ailing Bush and his entire family.
George H.W. Bush served as president from 1989 to1993. He spent the previous eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president.
George H. W. Bush
1/12Former president George H. W. Bush attends an NFL football game between the Houston Texans and Cincinnati Bengals, Houston, Nov. 23, 2014.
2/12Former president George H.W. Bush, strapped to Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott, a retired member of the Army's Golden Knights parachute team, float to the ground during a tandem parachute jump near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, June 12, 2014.
3/12In this Sept. 21, 2013 photo, former president George H.W. Bush prepares to sign the marriage license of longtime friends Helen Thorgalsen (right) and Bonnie Clement (left) in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bush was an official witness at the same-sex wedding, his spokesman said, Sept. 25, 2013.
4/12Former president George H.W. Bush shakes hands with his son, former president George W. Bush during the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Dallas, April 25, 2013.
5/12Former President George H.W. Bush prays with Hurricane Katrina evacuees Rebecca Solomon (left) Terrill Hoskins, 3, LaShonda Hoskins and Ernie Ladd in the Reliant Center adjacent to the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 5, 2005.
6/12Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush talk with children as they visit displaced residents from the December tsunami in Weligama, Sri Lanka, Feb. 21, 2005.
7/12President George H.W. Bush, along with unidentified staff members and secret service agents, takes a morning run, at Ft. McNair in Washington, August 5, 1991.
8/12Stephen Levin of Wynnewood, Pa., watches President Bush announce allied forces air strikes against Iraq at an appliance store in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Jan. 17, 1991.
9/12President George Bush (left) is congratulated by outgoing President Ronald Reagan after Bush took the oath of office as the 41st president of the United States on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 1989.
10/12President-elect Ronald Reagan, his wife Nancy, Vice President-elect George H.W. Bush, and his wife Barbara wave from the balcony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Jan. 19, 1981.
11/12George Bush, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is shown at U.N. headquarters in New York, 1971.
12/12George Bush is sworn in as new director of the Central Intelligence Agency by Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart (left) as Mrs. Bush and President Gerald Ford look on at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., Jan. 30, 1976.
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