The Link Between Asthma and ObesityBy Peter Liu [Weight Loss]
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Is there a causal link between these two conditions? Peter Liu is keeping his puffer within hand’s reach.  It’s long been assumed that obesity is a large contributing factor towards the future development of all sorts of fun-sapping conditions like coronary heart disease, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and asthma. Common risk factors for both obesity and asthma are what have linked the two together, but new research suggests we should be finding different avenues to connect them.Grasping Research New analysis into the relationship between obesity and asthma suggests that there is no causal link between the two. Printed in the September issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care, a New Zealand study from the University of Otago led by Dr. D Robin Taylor has found that the inflammation that exists in obesity and asthma sufferers do not interact. To date, common inflammation markers between asthma and obesity have not been solidly linked. Having long been assumed that the increased risks associated with obesity greatly affect asthmatics, study researchers guessed the low-grade systemic inflammation would encourage and enhance respiratory inflammation seen in asthma. Researchers believe obesity and asthma can generate a mixed airway inflammation, making asthma in obese patients much harder to treat. To test common markers and interaction between systemic and local inflammation (and therefore asthma and obesity), 79 women took part in an asthma research study. Of the research subjects, 20 had asthma and were obese, 19 had asthma and were of normal weight, 20 were obese without asthma and 20 were neither obese nor asthmatic. The asthmatic patients were told to stop taking their asthma medication for a withdrawal period of four weeks or until they experienced “loss of control.” At that point, a battery of tests was taken: blood tests, tests for systemic and airway inflammation biomarkers, such as C - reactive protein (CRP), among other proteins found in inflammatory cells or saliva. Other tests examined lung function, lung volume or measured breath. Deflating Results Taylor’s team found that systemic inflammation markers in obese subjects were higher and that asthma patients contained more local inflammation markers. Obesity was found to adversely impact lung function, but the systemic inflammation that comes from obesity and local airway inflammation from asthma were separate. This meant that obese patients with asthma don’t necessarily have worsened breathing effects due to their weight. Despite this, Dr. Taylor is relatively unfazed by the discovery because he now knows the problem is elsewhere in the body. In the future more studies will be done to determine the link between obesity and asthma. |
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