Childhood Obesity is Major Risk Factor for Asthma: Study

Obesity increases the risk of asthma attacks in children, according to a study.

Childhood obesity is a serious condition that threatens the status of health and wellbeing of any nation. Changing lifestyles accompanied by increased dependence on unhealthy food and fatty snacks and less hours of physical activity result in illnesses and many life-threatening diseases like cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems. Recently, researchers from Australia and U.K. found being overweight can up the risk of asthma in young children. They say an additional unit of body mass index (BMI) causes 55 percent increase in inflammatory responses in airways.

Their study examined around 5,000 children with asthma aged about seven and used a method called Mendelian randomization that records individual genetic data and other facts to assess the relation between asthma and BMI levels. They also noted children's fat mass, lean mass and probability for asthma using a genetic score based on 32 BMI related gene variations, reports the Guardian.

It was observed that asthma was common in children with high BMI levels and fat and lean muscle mass. The authors believe obesity prevention strategy can lower the prevalence of asthma attacks in mid-childhood and in later years.

However, the research could not accurately define a link between obesity and respiratory illness owing to certain limitations. The authors noticed in some cases, the asthma attacks were not triggered by inflammation in airways in those with increased lean body mass and composition. They add further investigation is needed to discover a direct relation between obesity and asthma.

"Environmental influences on the development of asthma in childhood have been extensively investigated in epidemiological studies, but few of these provide strong evidence for causality. Higher BMI in mid-childhood could help explain some of the increase in asthma risk toward the end of the 20th century. Although the continued rise in obesity but with a slowing in the rise in asthma prevalence in some countries implies that other non-BMI-related factors are also likely to be important," write the authors in the study.

More information is available online in the journal PLoS Medicine.

© MD News Daily.