NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For the same perceivedseverity of asthma symptoms, obese patients exhibit worse asthmacontrol than their non-obese peers, Canadian researchers havefound.

The findings, they say, suggest that people who are obese withasthma may carry a specific trait or “phenotype” that causes themto have poorer asthma control than people who are not obese withasthma.

Dr. Louis-Philippe Boulet and colleagues, from Hopital Laval inQuebec, studied 44 obese subjects with asthma with 44 subjects withasthma who were not obese.

Compared with those who were not obese, those who were obese hadpoorer asthma control, as well as lower lung function. Moreover,blood levels of C-reactive protein and fibrinogen — two markers ofinflammation — were higher in obese subjects than nonobesesubjects.

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