Two studies link obesity to asthma
Two studies link obesity to asthma
First confirmations of long-standing assumption
Obesity may increase the risk of asthma, suggest two new studies presented at the recent American Lung Association/American Thoracic Society International Conference in Chicago.
In one study, researchers analyzing data on more than 100,000 nurses found that the more overweight a nurse was, the greater her risk of developing asthma in adulthood. The second study found that the most overweight 26-year-olds were more likely to have asthma than the thinnest ones.
While obesity is second only to smoking as an overall risk factor for disease, there was no proven link between obesity and asthma. It had been assumed that people with asthma eventually become overweight because their breathing problems limit their activity, says Carlos Camargo Jr., MD, DrPH, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, leader of the nurses study.
"But with proper treatment, people with asthma should not have activity limitations," Camargo says.
Camargo and colleagues used data from the the women in the Nurses Health Study II, a prospective study of 116,678 female nurses. Of those nurses, they tracked the 89,061 who did not have asthma in 1991 and found that 1,652 developed asthma between 1991 and 1995. Those who were the most obese in 1991 were three times more likely to develop asthma than those who were the least overweight.
In the second study, British researchers examined the relationship of birth weight and weight and height at age 26 to the prevalence of asthma in more than 8,000 people. The heaviest adults were 80% more likely to have asthma than the thinnest ones, according to researcher Seif Shaheen, PhD, of the United Medical and Dental Schools in London.
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