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 Among children ages 3 to 8 hospitalized for asthma, the obese
patients were also more likely to be re-admitted to the hospital
within 30 days and to stay at the hospital for a longer period of
time, researchers found.
“The prevalence of asthma (in children in developed countries) is
high, and it is also one of the major reasons for hospitalizations
among children,” said lead author Yusuke Okubo of the National
Research Institute for Child Health and Development in Tokyo.
“Asthma is a chronic disorder, and poor control of asthma may result
in lower quality of life, school performance and self-confidence,”
Okubo told Reuters Health by email.
The study team investigated nearly 39,000 hospital discharge records
for children between 2010 and 2015, classifying the patients as
underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese according to World
Health Organization body mass index (BMI) categories. Eight percent
of kids were underweight, 75% normal weight, 9% overweight and 8%
obese.
The researchers then compared 30-day hospital readmission, need for
intensive care, average total hospital costs and length of hospital
stay among all patients.
They found that kids in all four weight groups had similar needs for
intensive care and total costs for hospitalization. Obese children
hospitalized with acute asthma problems were 26% more likely to be
readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, however, and their
average hospital stays were slightly longer than those of
normal-weight kids.
“We assumed that children with obesity were more likely to be
hospitalized repeatedly,” Okubo said. “At this time, we are not sure
the exact biological mechanisms for the associations between asthma
and obesity.”
Potential risk factors for asthma include age, race and ethnicity,
socioeconomic status, medication adherence, access to health care
and a history of sinusitis, the study authors write online October
18 in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. A 2013 review of 35 studies
also found that gender plays a role, with obese girls more likely to
have asthma diagnoses than obese boys, they note.
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“The obesity-asthma link appears to be more prominent in girls,
which is consistent with several study findings in adult populations
where obese women are more likely to have asthma or worse asthma
control,” said Pei-Ching Liu, a researcher at National Taiwan
University in Taipei who wasn't involved in the study.
“There is still no satisfactory explanation of the underlying
mechanism,” Liu told Reuters Health by email. “However, hormones or
changing body composition have been implicated since early onset of
puberty in children.”
In a previous study using data on more than 74,000 children in the
U.S. who had asthma exacerbations in 2012, Okubo and her colleagues
found that obese children had nearly double the odds of using
mechanical ventilation, an average of $1,600 more in hospital
charges and spent a quarter of a day longer in the hospital.
“Pediatric obesity is a public health problem and is associated with
infections, chronic disorders, asthma and future heart disease,”
Okubo said. “Weight reduction and a healthy lifestyle is important
for children to control asthma severity.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2h6n0jy
Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2017.
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reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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