PEDIATRICS Vol. 106 No. 6 December 2000, pp. 1436-1441
Do Obese Inner-City Children With Asthma Have More Symptoms Than Nonobese Children With Asthma?
Received Apr 17, 2000; accepted May 31, 2000.
,
,
, ,
From the * Division of General Pediatrics, Department of
Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Children's Hospital
at Montefiore, Bronx, New York; the
Department of Pediatrics, Mount
Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York; § Rho, Inc, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina;
Michigan State University, Flint, Michigan; and the
¶ Department of Pediatrics, Jacobi Medical Center, Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.
Objective. To test whether obesity is associated with decreased peak expiratory flow rates (PEFR), increased asthma symptoms, and increased health service use.
Design/Methods. Secondary analysis of data from a cross-sectional convenience sample.
Setting. Emergency departments (EDs) and primary care clinics in 8 inner-city areas in 7 cities.
Participants. One thousand three hundred twenty-two children aged 4 to 9 years with asthma.
Measures. Obesity was defined as a body mass index (BMI, weight/height2) >95th percentile. Nonobese children were those with a BMI between the 5th and 95th percentile. Underweight children with a BMI <5th percentile were eliminated from the study. Demographic and anthropometric data were obtained during a baseline interview with the primary caretaker and the child. Symptoms, health service use data and measurements of PEFR were obtained by parental report during the baseline interview and at 3-month intervals by telephone interview over the following 9-month period.
Results. Obese (n = 249) and nonobese (n = 1073) children did not differ in terms of age, gender, family income, passive smoke exposure, caretaker's mental health, and skin test reactivity to indoor allergens. Obese children were more often Latino (28% vs 17%) and, in the 3 months before the baseline interview, were more likely to have used oral steroids (30% vs 24%). There were no differences between groups in terms of baseline PEFR scores. During the 9 months after baseline assessment, the obese group had a higher mean number of days of wheeze per 2-week period (4.0 vs 3.4), and a greater proportion of obese individuals had unscheduled ED visits (39% vs 31%). There were no differences between the groups in terms of frequency of hospitalization, or in nocturnal awakening.
Conclusions. In our sample of inner-city children with asthma, obese children used more medicine, wheezed more, and a greater proportion had unscheduled ED visits than the nonobese children. Key words: asthma, obesity, children, peak expiratory flow, inner-city.
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