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Obese kids with asthma take more medications, find it harder to control their symptoms,have more flare ups, and make more ED visits than children withasthma who are not obese or overweight, researchers from theUniversity of California, San Diego, reported in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology . The authors explained that theirs is the first study to take intoaccount race and social factors to show that obese children needmore medications to control their asthma flare ups. The investigators wrote: "Improving nutritional status, preventing obesity , and stressing the importance of weight loss might improve asthmacontrol and exacerbation risk in children and decrease theincidence of asthma in adults." 10% of American children today have asthma, and 17% are obese.Obesity and asthma rates have increased significantly since the1980s. Previous studies, the authors wrote, had pointed towards anassociation between obesity and asthma, however, their findingswere mainly unclear and sometimes contradictory. Dr. Kenneth B. Quinto and team gathered data on 41,819 kids in aKaiser Permanente health plan. All of them had been diagnosed withasthma. 56% were male, 43.5% female. 55.9% of the 13,815 Hispanicchildren, 50.3% of the 5,736 African-American children and 41.5% ofthe 9,038 Caucasian kids were overweight/obese. The fatter children used, on average, 3.1 rescue inhalers eachyear, compared to 2.8 among the normal-weight children. Inhaled steroids, such as Flovent or Pulmicort, the mainstays of treatment to control airwayinflammation on a daily basis among patients with asthma, were usedmore often by the heaver children, compared to those ofnormal-weight. Emergency department visits were more common among the obesechildren (9%) compared to the normal weight ones (8.1%).Hospitalization rates were similar, 1.9% for obese, 1.8% foroverweight and 1.9% for normal-weight kids. Even after taking account differences in sex, diabetes , race and socioeconomic levels, the results still stood up, theauthors added. The extra weight on the lungs experienced by obese children maymake them feel as if they require more drugs, the researcherssuggest. Also, obese children (and adults) do not respond as wellto steroids as do children of normal weight. The authors concluded: "Childhood obesity disproportionately affects certain culturalgroups. Obese children experience increased asthma morbiditythrough ED visits for asthma when compared to normal-weightchildren." Written by Christian Nordqvist. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Motorola OEM Housing , China iPod Touch Screen Digitizer, and more. For more , please visit iPad LCD Screen Replacement today!
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