Conicity Index as an Anthropometric Index of Central Obesity in the Prediction of Adult Bronchial Asthma; Correlation with Fractional Exhaled Nitrous Oxide Tests

Abstract

Obesity and bronchial asthma (BA) are two major health concerns. These entities have been further established by several meta-analyses. Still, these analyses denote to ''general-obesity'', that classically measured via body mass index (BMI), which is a broad measure unable to distinguish between lean musclebulk and body fats. Thus, other indices, should applied like waist perimeter, waist/hip ratio, and conicity index (CI), which are also reasonable, and normalized easily. Sufficient studies on the BA association with CI are lacking up till now. Our work was designed based on the theory that obesity worsens BA symptoms, aiming to evaluate the asthma relationships and CI. Methodology: This is an observational-study conducted on 410 asthmatics consulting outpatient-respiratoryclinic. They were diagnosed by pulmonologists, then referred for spirometric pulmonary functions (SPF) and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) tests. Patients' weight, height and BMI were measured and accordingly divided into two-classes ''nonobese and obese''. The X 2-test was applied to analyze the associations among qualitative parameters. Level of significant acceptance was 5%, and the analyses had completed by using the SPSS package. Results: Mean±SD of weight, height, and BMI were 80.9±15.4, 1.64±1.6, and 30.8±5.4, respectively. AObindices were 96.2±14.3, 107.1±10.6, 0.98±0.9 and1.25±0.1 for waist, hip, W/HR, and CI respectively. The mean FENO-measures were 43.8 ppb. There was a significant variation in the means of PEF and FEV1/FVC only, although the FENO-tests were equivalent between the sexes.There was a strong association between CI with increasing age. The CI had a weak non-significant association with increasing FENO-results. Conclusion: The conicity index as an anthropometric index of central obesity is not associated with the FENO test among adult asthmatic patients. There was non-significant variation between obese and nonobese groups. The CI is not useful in the prediction of adult BA.

Effect of obesity on airway and systemic inflammation in adults with asthma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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“…The publication year ranged from 2006 to 2021. Sixteen articles (33%) were from America and Canada,33–48 14 (29%) were from Europe,49–61 11 (23%) were from Asia,62–72 five (10%) were from Australia and New Zealand,73–77 one (2%) was from Africa78 and one (2%) was from South America 79. Asthma was diagnosed by a physician and confirmed by variable airflow obstruction (airway hyper-responsiveness and/or bronchodilator reversibility) in 25 (52%) articles, physician-diagnosed in 19 (40%) articles, diagnosed as coded in a database in one (2%) article, and the method of asthma diagnosis was not reported in three (6%) articles.…”

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