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JACI Highlights - March 2007
McLachlan et al - Adiposity, asthma and airway inflammation
In the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, McLachlan and colleagues explore the association between body fat and asthma. Several studies have found obesity to be associated with an increased risk of asthma in women, but this has been found less often in men. The authors investigated whether this sex-difference is because obesity is normally measured using body mass index which is a less reliable indicator of body fat in men than women. They used bioelectrical impedence to measure body fat in more than 900 32 year-old people in Dunedin, New Zealand. They confirmed that high body fat was associated with asthma and airway narrowing in women, whereas men with high body fat had no increased risk of asthma and were less likely to have airway narrowing. Their results show that obesity is associated with asthma and airway narrowing in women, but not in men. However, body fat was not associated with asthma-type airway inflammation in either sex. This suggests that obesity may cause asthma in women by different mechanisms.
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