With the rates of obesity and asthma at an all time high in America, researchers at UB have been able to find a link between the two conditions.
According to Frank J. Cerny, professor and proprietor of the study, the increase in pressure of the chest walls caused by obesity may contribute to increased asthma symptoms.
"This pressure increase leads to the reducing of lung volume strictly altering the airways," Cerny said.
The idea for the survey came about a year and a half ago through simple observation.
"The study originated out of the reviewing of statistics showing us the rapid increase in obesity over the past fifteen years," he said. "Combine this with the yearly increase of asthma diagnoses, and you have two things that seem to be undoubtedly intertwined."
Cerny conducted the study by inducing asthma-like symptoms in non-asthmatic volunteers, simulating the participant's body mass index to that of an obese individual. Each volunteer in the study had a BMI of less than 25, with no history of asthma, smoking and/or cardiopulmonary disease. Thirty is the BMI cutoff line to be considered obese.
The study used the process of chest loading, along with calf compression, in order to simulate the increased lung-blood volume and lung pressure of an obese individual.
"As the severity of the simulated obesity increased in the volunteers, long volume was greatly decreased and airways became extremely agitated," Cerny said. "Physicians are mistaking this for asthma, when it really is normal breathing patterns of people with obesity."
Cerny said that physicians need to use caution when diagnosing asthma in obese patients, recommending that the patient should lose weight prior to taking any medication, especially since it may not be required.
Ben Kessel, a senior health and wellness major, is a certified personal trainer who has worked with obese clients in the past, most of whom have shown symptoms of asthma.
"I've worked with many individuals over the obesity limit, and virtually all of them responded to physical activity by showing reasonably strong signs of asthma," Kessel said.
According to Kessel, the amount of pressure and constrictions on the body of an obese person is extremely overwhelming, making even the most mundane of tasks difficult.
Similar to Type-2 Diabetes, asthma can be eliminated if not greatly minimized in obese individuals with a significant loss of weight. This is the main goal of Cerny's experiment, and he hopes to continue and expand on his findings.
"We are currently in the process of contacting physicians of obese patients who are diagnosed with asthma," he said, "with the hope of bringing them into the study so we could track their weight loss in correlation with the reducing or elimination of their asthma."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
