A new study report published in the Journal Pediatrics has suggested that obese children are at an increased risk of developing asthma. During the study, researchers found that asthma diagnosis among children with obesity was significantly higher when compared to children who fall in the normal weight range. The research report also suggested that 23 to 27 percent of new asthma cases were directly attributable to obesity.
"Paediatric asthma is among the most prevalent childhood conditions and comes at a high cost to patients, families and the greater health system. There are few preventable risk factors to reduce the incidence of asthma, but our data show that reducing the onset of childhood obesity could significantly lower the public health burden of asthma. Addressing childhood obesity should be a priority to help improve the quality of life of children and help reduce pediatric asthma," said Terri Finkel, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando and the co-author of the study, Eurekalert.org reports.
During the study, researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 500,000 children, aged between two to seventeen. Later, researchers matched obese patients with normal weight patients of the same age, gender, race, ethnicity, insurance type, and location of care.
A deep study on the medical records of these patients revealed that obesity not only triggers asthma but also appears to increase the disease severity. Apart from obesity, some other risk factors that may trigger an asthma attack are male sex, an age of under 5 years old, African-American race and public insurance.
A few days back, another study report published in the journal Environment International had revealed that long-term exposure to road traffic noises will increase the risk of obesity. The research carried out by scientists at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) studied the health status of 3796 people and analyzed whether there is a connection between traffic noises and markers of obesity.
At the end of the research, ISGlobal experts found that exposure to road traffic will influence various factors like weight, height, body mass index, waist circumference and abdominal fat.
