Comorbidities in asthma, what impact?

Introduction: Obese asthma patients may be considered as a special category and it is important to assess if there are other comorbidities having an impact on asthmatic-obese-patients. The aim of the study is to assess comorbidities prevalence in asthmatic patients, particularly in obese, and their impact on asthma. Methods: A retrospective study carried out in the pulmonology disease of Charles Nicolle’ hospital in Tunisia, including 170 asthmatic patients. Comorbidities studied were obesity, defined by a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m², esophageal-reflux, dyslipidemia, diabetes, dysthyroidism, heart diseases, high blood pressure, nasal polyposis, sinusitis and sleep apnea syndrome. Results: Patients were aged between 15 to 88 years (mean age was 48 years). Sex ratio was 0.35. Mean BMI was 28,608 Kg/m2 ± 5,8527 with extremes from de 17 to 54,5 Kg/m². About 32,9% of patients were obese. Other comorbidities were seen in 56.5% of patients. Asthmatics with a higher BMI had more comorbidities 21% in obese vs 10.5% (p = 0,049). High blood pressure was more seen in obese patients: 8.24% versus 1.18 (p=0.016). Esophageal-reflux seen in 8.2%, was not more frequent in obese patients (p=0.194) and it had not a correlation with severity of asthma (p=0.161). Conclusion: Many risk factors are common between obesity and other morbidities in asthmatic patients, which can explain the higher prevalence of comorbidities in obese asthmatics shown in our study.