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The effects of body weight on airway calibre

¹ Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, ² Cooperative Research Centre for Asthma, Camperdown, ³ University of Sydney, Sydney, and ⁴ Dept of Respiratory Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital, St. Leonards, New South Wales, Australia. ⁵ Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

CORRESPONDENCE: G. G. King, Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Dept of Respiratory Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital, Pacific Highway, St. Leonards 2065, Australia. Fax: 61 299066391. E-mail: ggk@woolcock.org.au

Keywords: Airway conductance, airway hyperresponsiveness, asthma, lung volume measurements, obesity

Received: September 7, 2004
Accepted December 2, 2004

Increased wheeze and asthma diagnosis in obesity may be due to reduced lung volume with subsequent airway narrowing.

Asthma (wheeze and airway hyperresponsiveness), functional residual capacity (FRC) and airway conductance (G_aw) were measured in 276 randomly selected subjects aged 28–30 yrs. Data were initially adjusted for smoking and asthma before examining relationships between weight and FRC (after adjustment for height), and between body mass index (BMI = weight·height^–2) and G_aw (after adjustment for FRC) by multiple linear regression, separately for females and males.

For males and females, BMI (±95% confidence interval) was 27.0±4.6 kg·m^–2 and 25.6±6.0 kg·m^–2 respectively, G_aw was 0.64±0.04 L·s^–1·cmH₂O^–1 and 0.57±0.03 L·s^–1·cmH₂O^–1, and FRC was 85.3±3.4 and 84.0±2.9% of predicted. Weight correlated independently with FRC in males and females. BMI correlated independently and inversely with G_aw in males, but only weakly in females.

In conclusion, obesity is associated with reduced lung volume, which is linked with airway narrowing. However, in males, airway narrowing is greater than that due to reduced lung volume alone. The mechanisms causing airway narrowing and sex differences in obesity are unknown.

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