Response to medications can be reduced due to obesity
Being overweight or obese does not worsen level or severity of asthma in patients with mild or moderate disease forms but can reduce response to asthma medications, as per a study by National Jewish Health researchers.
Lead author E. Rand Sutherland, Associate Professor of Medicine at National Jewish Health, and lead author of the paper appearing in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, remarked that there is a possible link between obesity and asthma.
From Sciencedaily.com:
“By studying a well characterized group of patients with asthma, we were able to determine that increased weight is not associated with more severe asthma. Although benefits can be obtained with weight loss in other diseases, these findings suggest that an improvement in asthma may not necessarily result from weight loss.
“The findings also suggest that patients and physicians should be aware that obese asthma patients may not respond well to corticosteroids, the most successful controller medication for asthma, which can affect dosing decisions and choices of possible alternatives to steroids.”
The data is suggestive of the fact that obese and overweight asthmatic patients respond less than their lean counterparts as far as controller medications for asthma are concerned, as per Dr. Sutherland.
In short, asthmatic patients must make sincere efforts to keep a constant check on their body weight so that their bodies can respond well to medications.
Tags: asthma, obesity, steroid medications, Steroids
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