The Relationship between Asthma and Overweight in Urban Minority Children

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INTRODUCTION

Asthma is the principal cause of chronic illness and school absenteeism in children. Asthma imposes a disproportionate burden on ethnic and racial minorities and poor inner-city children. Obesity in children is another major public health concern. The rise in obesity has been attributed to lifestyle changes that have resulted in decreased energy expenditure, whereas the increase in asthma prevalence remains unexplained. Because the increases in asthma and obesity appear to have coincided, it has been suggested that they may be causally related. Results of studies on the association between overweight/obesity and asthma in children have been inconsistent, and the exact nature of the relationship remains unclear.

The diagnosis of asthma in previous studies relied on physician-diagnosed asthma, parental report of asthma symptoms or use of asthma medications. In economically disadvantaged inner-city children, the diagnosis of asthma is dependent not only on patient’s perception of symptoms but also on the availability and access to healthcare. Objective measures of lung function would minimize difficulties in diagnosing cases of asthma in these children. Furthermore, standard body mass index (BMI) reference values were not available for the studies on this subject that were conducted before 1991.

The focus of this study was to describe the proportion of inner-city children who are overweight (BMI >85th percentile) and to study the relationship between being overweight and having asthma as determined by objective measures of airway obstruction using spirometry. Beat the drug companies and cheap viagra professional online