Investigating the association between obesity and asthma in 6- to 8-year-old Saudi children: a matched case–control study

Obesity might be causally linked to asthma in boys and girls of Middle Eastern origin but the mechanism does not involve airway obstruction. Instead, obesity appears to cause asthma, at least in part, by making children more prone to allergic reactions against airborne substances such as pollen. Aziz Sheikh and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh in the UK compared 632 pre-pubertal Saudi children with asthma with the same number of otherwise comparable children without asthma. Separate assessment of 388 matched pairs of boys and 244 matched pairs of girls, with careful attention to potentially confounding factors, indicated that obesity was correlated with the incidence of asthma in both sexes. The correlation was stronger in girls than in boys. These observations confirm findings from broadly comparable analyses of populations with different ethnic backgrounds and ages.