Abstract:
This study aimed to evaluate the total and abdominal adiposity markers in asthmatic patients and their relation to asthma severity and PFTs. Seventy non-smoking adult asthmatics, aged 38.6 ±11.8, (42.9% male), were subjected to history, clinical and radiological examination, measurement of weight, BMI, waist circumference, waist/hip ratio, abdominal height and PFTs. Patients were classified by asthma severity into: 11 intermittent, 15 mild, 26 moderate and 18 severe asthmatics and categorized by BMI into: 25 normal weights, 16 overweight, 22 obese and 7 morbidly obese patients. There was significant increase in total and abdominal adiposity markers with direct linear correlations with increasing asthma severity. Obesity category showed significant inverse correlations with FVC%, FEV1%, TLC% and FRC% and direct linear correlations with DLCO% and DLCO/AV. The interactions between the adiposity markers and PFTs were analyzed using general linear model with MANOVA and revealed more significant associations for the abdominal than total adiposity markers with most PFTs. The results of the study suggest that adiposity markers increase with increasing asthma severity. The abdominal adiposity markers are more effective predictors of obesity on PFTs than total adiposity markers.
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