gms | German Medical Science

Kongress Medizin und Gesellschaft 2007

17. bis 21.09.2007, Augsburg

Article

Send article

Obesity and asthma: potential effect modification by sex, but not by allergic status

Meeting Abstract

Search Medline for

  • Adrian Loerbroks - Institute of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg
  • Christian Apfelbacher - Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Brighton, Brighton
  • Manfred Amelang - Institute of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg
  • Til Stürmer - Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics and Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Harvard

Kongress Medizin und Gesellschaft 2007. Augsburg, 17.-21.09.2007. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2007. Doc07gmds615

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/gmds2007/07gmds615.shtml

Published: September 6, 2007

© 2007 Loerbroks et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

Text

Introduction/Background: The prevalences of both overweight and asthma are on the rise. Physiologically, overweight might be causally linked to asthma by inflammatory processes. Previous studies found a positive association between obesity and asthma, but it is unclear whether and to what extent this association varies by sex. Recent studies have also suggested that the association between obesity and asthma might be stronger in nonallergic than in allergic adults.

Materials and methods: We investigated the association between body mass index and the prevalence of asthma in a cross-sectional study of 4,010 adult women and men who completed a self-administered questionnaire on life-style factors and diseases in 2002/2003. The concomitant presence of hay fever and asthma was considered a proxy for allergic asthma. Prevalence ratios (PR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using Poisson regression. Multivariate estimates were adjusted for age, sex, education, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, family history of asthma, kindergarten attendance and city size until adulthood. According to a pre-specified protocol, analyses were stratified by sex and by hay fever.

Results: Compared with normal weight women, the multivariate PR was 1.72 (95%CI=1.18-2.50) for overweight and 1.88 (95%CI=1.16-3.03) for obese women. The PR was 1.58 (95%CI= 1.10-2.26) for overweight men and 0.99 (95%CI=0.56-1.74) for obese men versus normal weight men. Among individuals without hay fever, overweight and obese adults had PRs of 1.85 (95%CI=1.34-2.54) and 1.53 (95%CI=0.98-2.39), respectively, when contrasted with normal weight adults. Among adults with self-reported hay fever, the corresponding PRs were 1.71 (95%CI=1.09-2.70) for overweight and 1.56 (95%CI=0.81-3.02) for obese adults.

Discussion/Conclusions: The prevalence of asthma is almost twice as high in obese compared with normal weight women, but not in obese men. The association between overweight/obesity and asthma does not vary by allergic status.